19-Feb-2005 -- As I was teaching a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and GPS "mini-term" for students at the North Carolina School of Mathematics and Science, a confluence trip seemed like the perfect complement while in North Carolina. I had planned on visiting a few in southern Virginia. However, when I began studying the confluence map, I changed plans rather abruptly. Why visit any confluence when one of the few remaining untagged confluences in the Eastern USA was in the very state of North Carolina that I was teaching in? I did not have high hopes for 34 North 78 West, being on a military base, but I thought I would make some inquiries and see where it led. Beginning with some calls while awaiting my flight to North Carolina from Denver, and ending with faxes of my government identification and a few more telephone calls a few days later from Durham, North Carolina, I was literally on my way down Interstate Highway 40 in a rental car on a bright sunny morning. I had spoken with some very pleasant people at the base. It seemed almost too good to be true.

As it turned out, it was too good to be true. At 145pm, I arrived at the guard's station at the Sunny Point Military Ocean Terminal and showed my paperwork that I had faxed in during the previous week. The words I was dreading, that "they had no idea who I was" was quite disappointing. Apparently my paperwork never made it to the weekend staff of the base. We talked for awhile, but there was nothing the guards could do, even after they communicated with the security chief. I drove back to Durham, my round trip totalling 375 miles (just over 600 km), with nothing to show for it.

Actually, it was not a total loss for two reasons. One, I visited 35 North 78 West on the return trip. Two, I saw a part of the world I had never seen before, and for a geographer, any trip over new or even familiar terrain always makes for a good day.