Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: Island

  • Longest International Bridge

    I like extremes. The middle is boring. I’m also fairly certain that if I feature one end of the spectrum such as the Shortest International Bridge, that I’ll also feature the other end eventually. However, it’s going to be difficult to compete with that earlier article. Reader participation during the hunt and resulting discussions were…

  • As the Bird Flies

    There are people who read Twelve Mile Circle from places located literally around the globe. It’s hard to believe in an era of instantaneous worldwide communication that pigeons were once considered a viable method to pass information in certain specialized instances. Often these were for specific military or governmental purposes. However, I’m not quite as…

  • Outer Banks Weekend

    Speaking of the Outer Banks of North Carolina — we were just talking about that, right? — that’s where I happened to be visiting for an extended weekend. I don’t get to do that very often so this was my chance for our own little episode of Weekend Roady. I love going to the beach…

  • Barrier Island Superlatives

    I have a thing for islands but I think you already knew that. Barrier island fascinate me in particular and these narrow landforms hug coastlines all over the world. Their sand moves continuously, sculpting by tides, waves and winds according to the elements. They’re ephemeral and they change. So this left me to wonder about…

  • Run on Water

    Occasionally I’ll come across something really interesting, at least to me, and I’ll save it away for a more appropriate time. That’s great when it works. It’s much less impressive when other factors conspire to take away its very reason for being. Sadly, the 2012 “Run on Water” will be the “Run by the Water”…

  • Mainland Manhattan

    I reexamined a map of New York County for an article in progress recently and it reminded me of its odd boundaries. Most people are either unaware of this county or confuse it with the much larger New York City. Or if they have a basic awareness of the geography they equate it to the…

  • Airport Ferries

    I’ve mentioned my strangely popular ferry pages before. They receive lots of search engine referrals in a bit of a chicken-and-the-egg manner: did the site’s success create higher rankings on search engine algorithms or did search engines create the site’s popularity, or a bit of both in a ratcheting cycle? I dunno (frankly not going…

  • Off Season

    I read an interesting article the other day about Chincoteague, a tiny town on Virginia’s eastern shore (map). It’s a place probably best known for its annual wild pony roundup. The ponies live on Assateague Island just a short distance away. So each year a local volunteer fire department and it’s “saltwater cowboys” swim the…

  • Icelandic Diaspora

    I thought about a trip I made to Washington Island several years ago. That’s the island found off the tip of Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula where most people arrive by ferry. The residents displayed their Icelandic roots with great pride. I wondered at the time and I’ve wondered occasionally since, whether this was true or simply…

  • Jackson Volcano

    I’ve been inundated with search engine queries for the last several days about a city with a volcano and lots of brewpubs. They’ve been landing on the guest article that Marc Alifanz wrote about Portland, Oregon, which I think is probably the correct answer to the readers’ question. I’ve tried to find the source. Often…