25-Jul-2004 -- My wife and I were helping someone move from Oregon to California when we stopped at this confluence. There was no way I could pass up a confluence that was actually on our route, Interstate 5.

Interstate 5 runs from the northern border with Canada, down through Washington, Oregon, and California, all the way to the southern border with Mexico. It is part of the Pan-American Highway, which stretches across North and South America. Going north, the Pan-American Highway continues through Canada and Alaska. Going south, it continues through Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama. If it wasn't for an undeveloped gap between Panama and Colombia, you could continue to drive on through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Chile.

This confluence was both easy and hard to reach. The easy part was getting to the general vicinity of the confluence. You just drive south on Interstate 5 and carefully pull over and park on the shoulder. The hard part was getting to the precise spot of the confluence. Our GPS unit showed that the confluence was on the actual on-ramp in the flow of traffic.

To get to the spot where our GPS unit showed all zeros, we had to wait for a pause in the traffic. Then I carefully moved over onto the road while my wife took pictures of the GPS unit. Since we had to back away whenever we saw cars coming, I didn't have much time to find the spot. It took many tries, but I was able to get all zeros with an estimated accuracy of ±8 feet.

The highway doesn't look very busy in the pictures because I waited for gaps in the traffic so you could get a clear view of the area. We were pleasantly surprised to see a sign on Interstate 5 marking the 45th parallel. It was also nice to see nature doing its thing, right next to a major highway.