I started reading a book entitled "Sea People" by Christina Thompson. I only got one chapter into it when she made a comment about the vastness of the Pacific Ocean. I knew it was big, but I went downstairs and pulled out our globe and had a look. I had never stared at it long enough to realize that the Pacific covers darned close to half the earth. To get a feeling about it I calculated the great circle distance between Cape Lopatka on the Kamchatka Peninsula and Isla Crosslet in Chile. It is 10,189 statute miles. For reference, the circumference of the Earth is about 24,901 miles. Pretty amazing. What is even more amazing is that the people who settled Polynesia were very accomplished navigators. They had no instruments. They did it by watching the stars, among other things. Read about it here. When we were in Honolulu at the Bishop Museum they had a terrific planetarium program about how they used the stars.

So today's photo is of our globe looking at the Pacific Ocean. If you have a globe, I suggest that you do the same. It is fun and enlightening.