Here’s a number for you: 42. That’s how old I am as of today. But I’m not alone. Happy birthday to Sean Connery and Gene Simmons and Elvis Costello and my old pal Regis Philbin. Quite a motley crew.

Remarkably, today also happens to be my fraternal twin brother’s birthday. His name is Brian. He was born a whole 12 minutes before me. My brother became a certified public accountant and is now the co-owner and chief financial guru of a corrugated box manufacturing company in Chicago.

So he became a number-cruncher.

Me? Well, math and I don’t get along too well. We used to have a comfortable relationship, back when I was about seven years old. In fact, when I was in second grade I was accomplished enough that I was using a math textbook designed for fifth graders. Alas, by the time I was in fourth grade I was in… a fourth-grade math book. And that well describes the evolution of my mathematical abilities.

So I became a writer.

And, if you’ve been reading this blog for a while – or if you’ve read any of my books – you know that I have a soft spot for writing about geographical quirks. In fact, I’ve chronicled towns named after writers – like Poe (West Virginia), Thoreau (New Mexico) and Dickens (Iowa). And towns named after Shakespeare characters – like Othello (Washington) and Desdemona (Texas).

But now I’d like to get back to math. In fact, I’m going to take a deep breath and write about numerically lyrical towns. For instance…

If you’re driving through the Southwest, you can plan a stop at the California town of Twentynine Palms (near Joshua Tree National Park) or the Arizona hamlet of Two Guns, an abandoned ghost town about 30 miles east of Flagstaff. Interestingly, the latter town was named after a guy named “Two Gun Miller”… whose real name was Henry Miller… which is also the name of a famous writer, of course… who once wrote a travel narrative about a cross-country journey.

But Henry Miller – the writer – was a cynic of the highest order. He called his book The Air-Conditioned Nightmare. And Henry Miller – the Two Gun guy – was apparently an eccentric hermit who lived in a cave and was hostile to visitors. So let’s get back to happier geography:

A bit further east of Arizona, you can point yourself toward Texas and the town of Seven Sisters. Located south of San Antonio, it was likely named for the seven daughters of an important local landowner.  Then again, there’s also a town named Three Brothers – in Arkansas, deep in the Ozarks.

There is also Two Egg, Florida. And Three Notch, Alabama. And Four Forks, Louisiana. And Five Points, North Carolina. And Six, West Virginia. And Seven Trees, California. And Section Eight, Ohio. And Nine Points, Pennsylvania.

And then there are the more numerically ambitious hamlets – places with names like Sixteen (Montana), Forty-one (Oklahoma), Seventy Six (Kentucky), Eighty Four (Pennsylvania), Ninety Six (South Carolina)… and, of course, Thousand Oaks (California).

I can’t say I’ve been to any of these places – yet. But I have visited one little hiccup on the map that sort of belongs on this list. I was heading to an Arizona town named Bagdad, and I took a brief detour into absurdity when I realized that Bagdad is 22 miles from Nothing.

Literally. It’s called Nothing, Arizona.

It was nothing more than a turnoff (from Highway 97) featuring a ramshackle service station surrounded by several rotting vehicles. When I visited (eight years ago), the population was 4. I heard recently, from a woman at a book signing who randomly brought up the story of that very same town, that Nothing no longer exists. But I saw it while it did.

“Nothing Towing” said the sign. Nearby, there was a scrawled proclamation of sorts, something along the lines of a nihilistic pledge of allegiance: “Town of Nothing, AZ… Founded 1977… The staunch citizens of Nothing are full of hope, faith and believe in the work ethic. Thru the years these dedicated people had faith in Nothing, hoped for Nothing, worked at Nothing, for Nothing…”

Here’s a photo from there, starring the self-proclaimed sheriff of Nothing (and he showed me the badge to prove it) – a survivalist who called himself “Jim Outback.”

“Why do you call yourself that?” I asked him.

He pointed deep into the sagebrush. “Because I live out back.”

As we passed through Connecticut last June, Interstate 91 through Hartford offered a relatively uneventful drive past the city. But I was certainly intrigued by the names of the road. The first sign that we glimpsed, as we headed south from the city center, told us we were cruising along the “Governor’s Foot Guard Memorial Highway.” I have no idea what that means. Can anyone out there clue me in?

Then, just a few miles south, we were suddenly informed that it was now the Christopher Columbus Highway. I would describe that as a road-tripper’s non-sequitur.

A much more appropriate transition occurs in Kentucky. As you drive north on I-65 into Louisville, you find yourself on the Abraham Lincoln Expressway. As you reach the city limits, the interstate gets a different name – the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Expressway. I love that.

In fact, I came across a bunch of interesting highway names during my RV expedition this summer. Here follows my Top 12:

1. Jackie Mayer Miss America Highway (Hwy 2 into Sandusky, OH)

2. Governor’s Foot Guard Memorial Highway (I-91 in Hartford, CT)

3. Underground Railroad Memorial Highway (Hwy 131 in Michigan)

4. Senator Ralph Quattrociocchi Memorial Highway (I-490E toward Rochester, NY)

5. Purple Heart Trail (Hwy 4 in New Hampshire)

6. Ex-Prisoner of War Memorial Highway (I-395 in Connecticut)

7. Ragged Mountain Highway (Hwy 104 through New Hampshire)

8. Victory Highway (Hwy 102 through Rhode Island)

9. Yankee Expressway (I-84 through Hartford, CT)

10.  Christopher Columbus Highway (I-91 in Hartford, CT)

11.  Benjamin Franklin Highway (Hwy 422 in western Pennsylvania)

12.  Presidential Highway (Hwy 2 from New Hampshire to Maine)

Even better were the names of the less-traveled roadways, those boulevards and lanes and drives and dirt roads that are fed by the above-mentioned highways.  In fact, I can come up with my 25 favorite road names from our trip through 18 states this summer:

1. Flutie Pass (Natick, MA)

2. Cat Mousam Road (Kennebunk, ME)

3. Notta Road (Carthage, ME)

4. Lois Lane (Katonah, NY)

5. Boulevard of the Allies (Pittsburgh, NY)

6. What a Vu Way (Jay, NY)

7. Bellsqueeze Road (Clinton, ME)

8. Ampersand Avenue (Saranac Lake, NY)

9. Muhammad Ali Boulevard (Louisville, KY)

10.  Man O’ War Boulevard (Lexington, KY)

11.  Poverty Lane (Lebanon, NH)

12.  Robinhood Drive (Hermon, ME)

13.  Tee-O-Wanna Road (near Old Forge, NY)

14.  Cozy Retreat Road (Schellsburg, PA)

15.  Rushing Wind Lane (Lexington, KY)

16.  Tippecanoe Street (Wolf Lake, IN)

17.  Train Wreck Point Road (near Inlet, NY)

18.  Crooks Road (Green Bay, WI)

19.  Crooked Road (Bar Harbor, ME)

20.  Purgatory Road (Sutton, MA)

21.  Chagrin Boulevard (Beachwood, OH)

22.  Hot Metal Street (Pittsburgh, PA)

23.  Happytown Road (E. Orland, ME)

24.  XY Avenue (Moore Park, MI)

25.  Lombardi Avenue (Green Bay, WI)

I can’t seem to see a sand dune without thinking of a philosophy class that I struggled through in college. We explored something called the Continuum Fallacy, which is basically this: If you have a heap of sand – say a million grains of sand – and you remove one grain, is it still a heap? Sure, right? But then where does it suddenly cease existence as a heap? It was synapse-snappers like that one that led me right into the only C-minus of my life.

Yet, I still love sand dunes. In fact, thinking back on the sand dunes we’ve seen along our RV travels, I can come up with some criteria for what I consider great dunes:

1. Enormity. Great Sand Dunes National Park in southern Colorado fits the bill. It’s mind-bogglingly big. The heap of all heaps. They say it takes a healthy person an hour and a half to reach the top. We didn’t even make it one-tenth of the way.

2. Scenery. About two weeks into our very first RV excursion 15 years ago, Amy and I and  a couple of close friends made our way into (and up) the sand dunes in Death Valley. There’s a stranded-in-the-Sahara sort of vibe, but the view from the top was spectacular – a struggle to the peak of the highest one, yet still you find yourself below sea level.

3. Climbability. Yes, I’ve made up a word. I’m thinking, for instance, of Bruneau Dunes State Park in Idaho. There are a couple of massive dunes there, but you can climb to the top (from any side), and you feel like you’ve scaled the Great Pyramid.

4. Uniqueness. How about the White Sands of New Mexico. Dozens of square miles of white gypsum sand, unlike anything I’ve seen anywhere else. It’s like wading into a stark white ocean – and if you’re not careful, you lose your bearings. We left some markers along the way, so that we could make our way back to our RV.

All of which is another way of me explaining why I’m crazy about Sleeping Bear Dunes in northwestern Michigan. We visited there on Tuesday, having long wanted to return after experiencing it the first time around a decade-and-a-half ago. It didn’t disappoint.

Sure, I love the fact that I now write children’s books for a wonderful Michigan-based publisher called Sleeping Bear Press. But that’s only part of why I’m a fan of Sleeping Bear Dunes. Mostly, it’s because it offers all the elements of classic dunes:

Scenery: We drove along the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive, though forests that would open up into overlooks offering dunes backed by vistas of Glen Lake.

Uniqueness: The dunes rise almost vertically from the shores of one of the Great Lakes – a view of a seemingly endless sea from atop a heap of sand. Looking down from the viewpoint at one of the overlooks, we could see tiny people wading in the blue-green waters.

Enormity: That particular dune rose 450 feet above Lake Michigan. The brave folks who tried to climb it could be seen clawing and crawling at various points, like ants making their way up a ginormous anthill. Which brings me to…

Climbability: We drove another few miles to the Dunes Climb, and made our way a couple hundred feet up, where we sat for a while and enjoyed a breathtaking view. But the best part was the sprint down…