I photographed my first microconfluence today. You may be familiar with the Degree Confluence Project, where people take photos of  the meeting point of lines of latitude and longitude along with the story of finding it.

Charlie Loyd created the microconfluence because he wanted to take part, but all the full degree confluences near him had already been photographed. Microconfluence points (if I’m understanding him correctly) are at the meeting points of 1/100s of latitude and longitude, which are something like 2/3 mile apart. (Distances vary, of course, because the grid is on a curved surface.)

The degree confluences near Joshua Tree have also already been photographed, so I also liked the idea of microconfluences. (Plus, it reminds me of Ethan Mitchell’s blog about finding state border confluences.) Charlie was kind enough to make me a web-based app for it, so I knew one was a few blocks away. I was out on my dirt bike today and found it. I used a different app, called Altimeter, because I pay for phone and data by the datum (and pay way less per month because of it) :

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Then I realized that Charlie was talking about decimal coordinates, not the “minute-second” coordinates that Altimeter uses. Luckily, it turns out that microconfluences with minute coordinates divisible by three are also decimal microconfluences. This is from Maps With Me:

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And here’s the piece of dirt. The tire track on the left is the west edge of Border Avenue, a bit north of Two Mile Road. The little bush is a creosote.  Anti-climactic, you say? Maybe I should mark the spot with a monument of some sort.

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