Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: History

  • Ohio River, Part 8 (Ark Loop)

    After a warmup loop the day before, we set our sites on something more ambitious. This took us on a course extending northeast of Louisville to the outskirts of Cincinnati. From there we crossed into Indiana and followed the Ohio River. This combined one very specific destination along with some less structured county counting. I…

  • Ohio River, Part 7 (Corydon Loop)

    We used Louisville, Kentucky as our home base for the week and we took several day trips into the countryside. Because the drive to Louisville took a toll on us we decided to relax early in the week. Then our first foray focused on Corydon in nearby Indiana, barely a half-hour away. Something else figured…

  • Ohio River, Part 6 (The Big Four)

    Many people suggested the Big Four Bridge when I asked for Louisville suggestions. This spans a half-mile across the Ohio River, connecting the city on the Kentucky side to Jeffersonville, Indiana (map). However, there’s a catch. Only pedestrians can use it. Has my bridge mania finally gone too far? Can I really focus an entire…

  • Ohio River, Part 5 (Brewery Cluster)

    Let’s queue-up the broken record. I like visiting breweries and invariably I include an article focused on the topic every time I travel. So I’ll start with the usual clarifications, caveats and disclaimers. I created this page primarily for my personal recollection so feel free to skip it. We behaved responsibly and focused on quality…

  • Ohio River, Part 4 (Exploring Louisville)

    We finally arrived in Louisville after a couple days of driving and wandering. I’ll start by saying that it’s impossible to cover an entire city in a week. So we focused on one tiny corner and barely scratched the surface. I wouldn’t consider this a comprehensive guide, more like a few simple observations and a…

  • Ohio River, Part 3 (Onward towards Louisville)

    I created a jagged route as we passed between Portsmouth, Ohio and Lexington, Kentucky, before reaching the Interstate and continuing onward to Louisville. I needed to fill a county-counting hole in northeastern Kentucky. So I bounced between county lines for awhile and recorded seven new captures along the way. Of course I found a few…

  • Ohio River, Part 2 (Portsmouth)

    We began our journey with an easy drive along Interstate highways. I worried a bit about I-81 and its abundant truck traffic on the Friday before a 3-day weekend. Nonetheless we made it through and shot across West Virginia on I-64 unscathed. From there we only had to cut away at Huntington and follow the…

  • Carolina Wetlands, Part 8 (Rounding It Out)

    Well, we did it. We made it to the final article in the Carolina Wetlands series. Thank you for following along vicariously on my journey. Often I use the final article as a catch-all, a way to catalog stories that don’t fit anywhere else. It also lets me add a few items to my lists,…

  • Carolina Wetlands, Part 6 (Ruins and Tombs)

    South Carolina sure loved its old buildings whether lovingly maintained or reduced to rubble. In particularly her people revered historic churches with their requisite cemeteries filled with live oaks and draped in Spanish moss. Old churches and weathered cemeteries became a recurring theme on my journey. Or sometimes just the family cemeteries of long-lost plantations…

  • Carolina Wetlands, Part 5 (The Swamp Fox)

    So we finally get to Brigadier General Francis Marion, the so-called Swamp Fox. He was born on the family plantation sometime around 1732 although no definitive record exists, strangely enough. Then he spent much of his life there except for brief forays that included a stint in the French and Indian War. Nonetheless he was…