Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Month: December 2009

  • This Counts as a Geo-Oddity, Right?

    That’s how I’ve been rationalizing it, anyway. Santa brought the kids a wii for Christmas this year. Normally I’m not a videogamer, far from it as a matter of fact. However, we got one little game that is quite addictive for a geo-geek like myself. They call it “Island Flyover” and it comes bundled with…

  • Amazing Australian Road Distances

    Colin, a reader from South Hedland in Western Australia, sensed my dismay with the long distance displayed on a particular Texas road sign. He offered to share some extreme examples from his homeland.(1) My sign noted that El Paso, on the other side of the state, was 857 miles (1,380 kilometres) away. That’s pretty good…

  • Enclaves within Dhekelia

    Cyprus. One island split so many different ways. There’s the de facto partitioning between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. And there’s the United Nations buffer zone created along the ceasefire line. Finally, there’s the British Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia. This isn’t about any of those divisions. Rather the three, well actually four, tiny…

  • White Christmas

    It’s Christmas and I’m not likely to greet many visitors on Twelve Mile Circle today. Nonetheless I thought I’d post something quirky but topical. Consider this a little gift for those of you who did decided to spend some quality time on the web today. Well, between attending church, opening presents, and pursuing holiday cheer,…

  • Fortress Fixation

    I used my unexpected day off from work yesterday — courtesy of the weekend snowstorm — to focus on a webpage I’ve wanted to construct for awhile. It serves as a portal to various pages that outline historic military fortresses that I’ve encountered and recorded during my travels. Yes, along with lighthouses, waterfalls, breweries, ferries,…

  • After the Snow Fell

    The snow finally halted after an entire day of heavy accumulation. We can call the Washington, DC “Blizzard of 2009” officially over. Now it’s time to dig out the sidewalk. Then we can get the kids over to the sledding hill, and venture through a snowbound neighborhood before the onset of cabin fever. It looks…

  • Let it Snow!

    It’s snowing here in the Washington, DC area today. Already they’re calling it the snowpocalypse, the snownami, and of course “The Blizzard of 2009”. People around here tend to overreact when it snows because we don’t generally get large accumulations. Naturally everyone stripped the grocery stores bare of milk, bread, and toilet paper as it…

  • Twelve Mile House

    I get a lot of people looking for “Twelve Mile” places on this site. Naturally we should expect that for a site named Twelve Mile Circle. Sometimes it leads to amazing discovers like the Twelve Mile 500, the preeminent professional lawnmower race anywhere on the planet. Other times it leads to dead ends. So it…

  • Coordinate Palindromes

    I noticed an odd query on the site earlier today. Someone was searching for “Coordinate Palindromes in Nebraska.” I know exactly how they arrived here because the search engine linked them to one of my previous articles featuring Place Name Palindromes. However, I had no familiarity with what could possibly be considered a coordinate palindrome.…

  • Texas: Is Everything Really Bigger?

    I’ve been to Texas many times. I have family there, I have business there, and I’ve driven across its width. I don’t underestimate its gargantuan size. There’s a reason why “Everything is Bigger in Texas” has become such an iconic boast that borders on cliché. If Texas were still a country as it was when…