Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: Island

  • Traveling’s Greatest Hits

    It occurred to me, as I wrote two recent travelogues, that I’d visited a lot of interesting places in the last few years. I recorded my thoughts and impressions from those journeys on the pages of Twelve Mile Circle. The intent was to describe my adventures while still fresh in my mind. Looking back through…

  • Islands and Cape, Part 4 (Random Thoughts)

    There were numerous other happenings from my recent Cape Cod and Islands adventure that didn’t fit within larger themes. Some of them were unusual. Others simply recorded additions to my various lists. Still others, well, I’m not sure why I felt they were noteworthy except that they caught my attention for some inexplicable reason. My…

  • Islands and Cape, Part 2 (Momentous History)

    Coastal Massachusetts had plenty of history before the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620. Native Americans long lived there. Even other Europeans explored the area. Nonetheless it was the Pilgrims we all remembered from our elementary school curriculum and a lifetime of Thanksgiving holidays. So that’s where I began. I’d been wanting to go…

  • Islands and Cape, Part 1 (Seacoast Scenes)

    It seemed like I was on the road just yesterday and here I was back out in the wilds once again. This time my wife and I were celebrating a round-numbered wedding anniversary so we headed up to coastal Massachusetts and Rhode Island. I’d been to Boston many times before, however I’d never traveled along…

  • New Difference

    The recent 12MC article Small Change, Big Difference created an unusual amount of interest. One comment from reader Ross arrived embedded with a challenge: “This reminds me of a question I’ve often wondered: Which place changes the most when you add ‘New’ in front of the name? In other words: Which ‘New’ place is the…

  • Southern Swing, Part 1

    I still hate airlines. I don’t fear flying, I simply want to withhold my money from those greedy [censored] until the tight squeeze of market forces compel them to start treating their passengers with a little respect. I’m pretty much at the point where I’ll drive to any destination of a thousand miles or even…

  • Few Remain

    It had been a long time since I checked the visitor logs for new readers arriving from countries that had not ever landed on the pages of Twelve Mile Circle previously. I’d pretty much given up on that specific pursuit after tracking seven years of 12MC, figuring I’d already received what I was going to…

  • Particularly Possessive

    I noticed that Prince George’s County, Queen Anne’s County and St. Mary’s County — all in Maryland — included the genitive apostrophe to form their possessive constructions. I’d always taken it on faith that the United States Board on Geographic Names disallowed apostrophes for that specific purpose. That’s how we ended-up with Harpers Ferry and…

  • Seriously Broken

    The number of broken place names seemed amazing. I didn’t know what led people to memorialize broken objects, just noted that they they did and it amused me. Broken Lakes, Broken Ridges, Broken Points, Broken Valleys and on and on. The list was so exhaustive that I had a terrible time limiting my selection. So…

  • Revisiting Street View Extremes

    Time moves forward, an unstoppable force. We all must face that awful truth as we age. On a happier thought, that allowed me to revisit a Twelve Mile Circle article from nearly five years ago. Maybe the conditions changed, or maybe not. Let’s find out. In February 2010 I wrote Streetview Beats a Deadhorse. Back…