Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: Nature

  • Select Beaches in Saint-Martin

    Island of Saint-Martin / Sint Maarten (March 2011) There are more than twenty beaches on the island of St. Martin / Maarten, a space only a little larger than thirty square miles. Naturally that offers plenty of options. I’m not really a beach person and we remained almost entirely on the French side of the…

  • Wintertime in Corolla, Part 1 (Water)

    My travel took a beating in 2020. Little did I know. Little did any of us know. True, I did manage a proper vacation to Bermuda just before the pandemic struck. Then we hid for brief periods away from everyone else at lakes in Pennsylvania and in Michigan. That helped. Hopefully someone reading this page…

  • Whaling Industry Museum

    Pico, The Azores (Açores), Portugal (March 2001) The last whaling factory in the Azores operated at São Roque do Pico, from the cais (dock) along the waterfront. Whalers killed and harvested their prey in local waters. Then they delivered carcasses to the dock, where workers extracted oil and processed flesh and teeth. During its heyday,…

  • Porto do Cachorro

    Pico, The Azores (Açores), Portugal (March 2001) Porto do Cachorro meets the sea on Pico’s northwestern coast (map). It is an old, traditional town with narrow streets along a rugged coastline of rapidly cooled lava flows. When people settle the island they naturally used locally available building materials. For Pico that meant charcoal-black volcanic rocks.…

  • Icelandic Adventures

    Iceland (September 1999) For a country as small as Iceland, the capital city of Reykjavík and its suburbs felt much larger than one would expect. Hallgrímskirkja, a tall church sitting atop a hill, dominated the otherwise low-slung skyline. Corrugated iron protected historic homes near the harbor from cold rain and steady wind. Tjörnin (literally “the…

  • Historic Cantillon Brewery and Museum

    Brussels, Belgium (November 2003) Deep in the heart of Brussels, not far from the Grand’ Place, sits a small throwback to a simpler time. In ages past, people maintained a more intimate connection with the food and beverages they consumed. The Cantillon Brewery preserves this aesthetic. It serves a working museum (map) open for guided…

  • Belgium (November 2003)

    Monde Sauvage, Aywaille Our visit to Belgium this time was quite a bit different than any of our previous trips. We needed to focus on keeping a 2-year-old entertained so our usual options would not work. Our little guy loves animals so visiting Monde Sauvage [roughly translated: “Wild World”] seemed a natural choice (map). His…

  • Sydney Skyline

    As Viewed from the Taronga Zoo (October 1997) After twenty hours of flight from the east coast of the United States, we reached Australia, and arrived in Sydney with fourteen hours of jet lag to make up. We took this photograph from the north side of Port Jackson at the Taronga Zoo Sydney. From that…

  • Along Sydney Harbour

    Within the Royal Botanic Garden (October 1997) My wife sat on a wall along Farm Cove in the Royal Botanic Garden on a beautiful Spring day (map). The Sydney central business district formed a great backdrop behind her. Weather reports from home told of an unusually cold and rainy Autumn day back in the States…

  • Noosa National Park

    Noosa Heads, Queensland, Australia (1997) We drove 160 km north of Brisbane to Noosa Heads on the Sunshine Coast. This town served as a gateway to the spectacular Noosa National Park with its rugged shoreline and abundant native Australian wildlife (map). Hastings Street provided access to the popular Headlands section of the park. We found…