Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: Roads

  • 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 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 1 (Orientation)

    The COVID pandemic began to wane as summer approached. Sure, we’d taken pseudo-vacations since its arrival. We went to a couple of lakes and the beach, and experienced an almost normal trip to the South Carolina Lowcountry. Basically we went to places where we could hide for awhile and stay away from other people. So…

  • 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 1 (Padding the Count)

    Hopefully this will be the last set of articles where I ever have to mention the COVID-19 pandemic. Maybe this will all seem quaint five or ten years from now when someone stumbles across this page. For now though it continues to shape how I travel and where I go. Even so, life goes on…

  • Grand Case

    Island of Saint-Martin / Sint Maarten (March 2011) We used the town of Grand Case on the French side of the island as our base while exploring St. Martin. We selected Grand Case for reasons that appealed to us. We’re not much into crowds, resorts, casinos or all-night festivities which tended to rule-out the Dutch…

  • Wintertime in Corolla, Part 2 (Not Water)

    Sure, I enjoyed the sand and the waves during our brief hideaway on North Carolina’s Outer Banks (map). However I couldn’t spend the entire time just staring out the window or walking along the beach. We did some other things too. Everything seemed so weird though, partially because of the pandemic and partially because we…

  • 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…

  • Vila Franca do Campo

    São Miguel, The Azores (Açores), Portugal (March 2001) Vila Franca do Campo sits about midway along São Miguel’s southern coast (map). It served as the first capital city of São Miguel until it was destroyed by an earthquake in 1552. Now the capital is located in Ponta Delgada. Vila Franca do Campo has a wonderfully…

  • Ponta Delgada Streets

    São Miguel, The Azores (Açores), Portugal (March 2001) Most of the Azores seemed rather quiet and sparsely populated. Typically we encountered villages set amongst rolling farmland. However, Ponta Delgada on São Miguel’s southwestern coast, came closest to be being a city (map). Its population approached nearly seventy thousand people. So it served as both the…