Month: August 2012
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Move the Road
I’m not sure why it came to mind. I somehow remembered an odd series of jogs in a road I haven’t driven on in several years. Here is an example: Each summer I drove along Occohannock Neck Road on Virginia’s portion of the Delmarva Peninsula. A friend’s family owned a summer cottage at Silver Beach…
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Green River Island
Green River Island is one of those places that seems to belong to the wrong state. In this instance it feels like it should be part of Indiana but it’s actually part of Kentucky. It hardly seems like an island either although vestiges of its old topography continue to remain visible. Rather, the “island” has…
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10-4 Good Buddy
I’ve received a steady stream of visitors far removed from the geo-geek community on my Smokey and the Bandit Route article over the last several months. I didn’t anticipate or perhaps didn’t appreciate that the geographic construct behind a movie made over thirty years ago would still elicit much curiosity. Apparently I was wrong. Released…
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Pronounced HOW?!?
A comment caught my attention recently on my Mainly Marathons article. “Mr. Burns” (hopefully not this one) noticed that one of the towns I mentioned was Ulysses, Kansas. He wrote, “Oh, and if you go, be sure to pronounce Ulysses as “You-liss-us”, never as “You-liss-eez”. The latter pronunciation peeves the locals.“ That’s good to know.…
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Mainly Marathons
I always have some kind of weird geography-related scheme bubbling in the back of my mind. I’m constantly on the search for creative ideas for new places to visit. So I have one brewing at the moment — don’t know if it will actually happen — although the potential is there and I’m considering the…
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Named for Captain Cook
This isn’t intended as a biography of Captain James Cook although his voyages throughout the South Pacific and beyond were numerous and legendary. Rather this is about places named for Captain Cook, strewn about the waters in which he sailed and the shorelines that he charted. He has an entire society named for him if…
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Shortest 48
Today I’m fortunate enough to present a guest article from Jon Persky. Jon is a frequent contributor to the Twelve Mile Circle with a long history of insightful comments. He also inspired the popular Counting Border Crossings article a couple of years ago. In other words, Jon is an aficionado of geo-oddities of the highest…
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Connecticut Extremes: Are We There Yet?
It’s been a protracted series of Extreme Connecticut geography articles and you’re probably growing a little weary of them by now. I was in a similar position somewhere around this same point during our long and busy adventure. Nonetheless, nobody had ever visited the state’s four cardinal extremities in a single day before. We were…
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Connecticut Extremes: Water, Water Everywhere
Having survived the highpoint-tripoint humidity challenge earlier that morning, Steve of CTMQ led Scott of The Scenic Drive and myself to the next set of Connecticut geography extremes. It eventually dawned on us that they almost all involved water in some manner. The first attraction, Connecticut’s highest elevated pond, appeared by the roadside just a…
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Connecticut Extremes: Humidity and Humility
The Extreme Connecticut Geo-Tour began a day early for me with a seven-hour drive from the Washington, DC area to a hotel in Avon, CT that I used as my home base. I timed the drive well, managing to avoid various rush hours along a nefarious traffic corridor. Then I shot an email to Steve…