Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: Distance

  • Superlative Tunnels

    I’ve been enjoying the World’s Longest Tunnel page recently and I decided to see if I could locate some of the more striking examples using maps and photo sites. Oftentimes I could locate those spots although honestly, sometimes the interior of a tunnel isn’t particularly impressive. Anyway, let’s see what we can find in these…

  • Sunrise and Sunset over Water

    I posted an article on east coast sunsets over water nearly a lifetime ago in Internet time, way back in November 2008. I described peculiar instances where observers could experience sunsets totally over water on the eastern coast of the United States. Think about it. People on the eastern side of any landmass don’t have…

  • Streetview Beats a Deadhorse

    It all started innocently enough as a challenge from loyal reader “Matthias.” He began to ponder various geo-oddities surrounding the northernmost reach of Google Street View. Of course, I was up for a mental adventure after having been trapped in my home for several days due to snow.(1) However, unbeknownst to Matthias, Google Street View…

  • Canada-USA Border Segment Extremes

    Many superlatives describe the border between Canada and the United States. It’s the longest non-militarized border on the planet. It touches three different Oceans (Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic) plus the Great Lakes. It extends 8,891 kilometres (5,525 miles). While impressive, this isn’t about any of that. No, I’m more interested in the extremes in the opposite…

  • Northernmost England. Maybe.

    Berwick-upon-Tweed is the northernmost town in England. However, due to geography and history it also holds a lot in common with Scotland. First, notice it’s peculiar location along the River Tweed: specifically the northern side of the River Tweed. How did a little piece of England find its way to the opposite side of a…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • My Longest Road Trip

    I’ve been going through an old shoebox this week, looking at dusty photographs I took way back in the Summer of 1992 using a cheap Kodak Instamatic camera on low quality 110 film. I’d recorded an epic circular tour of the United States undertaken by a bunch of scruffy guys in their 20’s, most of…

  • Long Distance Diversion

    I canceled my DSL service a few days ago and moved to one of those “bundled” broadband services with voice, television and Internet access all rolled into a single plan. All went well and I don’t have any of the horror stories one typically hears about with these types of installations. It still fascinates me…

  • Now Malawi

    I’ve had a good month attracting new visitors from Africa. I’d pretty much stagnated with that audience lately so that’s a noteworthy accomplishment. I’ve tracked statistics for nearly two years and kept a close watch. Unfortunately I haven’t had as much success as I’ve wanted. I even lamented my poor record with African visitors in…