Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: Cities/Towns

  • The Hottest I’ve Ever Been in my Life

    Good lord, it’s hot in Phoenix, Arizona today. I set a personal temperature record: 111 degrees Fahrenheit (44 degrees Celsius). I could sense heat radiating off my shirt against my skin whenever I walked into the shade. My eyeballs turned to charcoal glowing in a grill, as Mother Nature blasted a blowdryer in my face,…

  • The John McCain Flight

    DISCLAIMER: This is a geography and travel blog, not a political blog. No endorsement or disparagement is intended. Later today I get to take the John McCain flight. No, I don’t get to fly with John McCain. I’m talking about the regularly-scheduled flight that is a small part of his political legacy. An Airport on…

  • Australia’s Weird Little Time Zone

    Continental Australia is divided into three standard time zones, Western, Central and Eastern. It’s pretty simple to understand even bearing in mind that Australian Central Standard Time aligns with the half-hour (UTC+9:30). Individual Australian states and territories determine whether to recognise Daylight Saving Time (DST) or not. Far-flung Australian island territories and its Antarctic stations…

  • In the 4th of July Spirit

    With the 4th of July holiday upon us, I thought it would be good to start this post with an image of Independence Hall (map). Here, the Founding Fathers created the Declaration of Independence so many years ago. That document had a profound and abundant impact on the foundation of the United States, a fact…

  • Wisconsin Wrap-Up

    I’ve returned from my trip to Wisconsin with tons of new material for the website. I already provided a preview of some of these on the Twelve Mile Circle (this blog). In addition, you can expect more detailed write-ups to start appearing on the permanent site over the next few days and weeks. Oddities that…

  • Unusual Goes Very Local, Part I

    Twelve Mile Circle is an appreciation of unusual places. However, they don’t have to be famous to be noteworthy. Every town has at least one unusual place, maybe more. Perhaps even your own hometown has a few. There is a spot in Arlington County, Virginia where a contiguous road called “North 26th Street” changes names.…

  • Northernmost and Southernmost World Capitals

    Twelve Mile Circle likes to deal with the extremes in geography. So the current topic continues with that theme, the national capitals that are closest to the north and south poles. Northernmost The title for northernmost national capital goes to Reykjavík, Iceland, at 64 degrees north. That’s just a couple of degrees short of the…

  • Narrowest Point in Maryland

    Maryland is about 250 miles long and about 100 miles wide at its greatest extremities. However, at one point it narrows to less than two miles where it forms its western panhandle. This is due to one natural geographic feature and one artificial line determined by humans. The Maryland-West Virginia border along this stretch hugs…

  • State of the Circle

    It’s difficult for me to believe, but I just hit the six month point with Twelve Mile Circle. So I thought I would take a moment to look back at the site by reviewing some highlights. Maybe I’ll even reflecting briefly upon the path that lead to this point. I wasn’t sure I’d last even…

  • Twelve Mile, Indiana

    It all started when I saw a query for “Twelve Mile Indiana” recorded in my web access logs. That’s not too strange. After all, this is Twelve Mile Circle. Someone typed the name of an obscure farm town into a search engine and out popped my site. That’s plausible. Misdirected links land here all the…