Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: U.S. States

  • Focused on Counties

    I’m planning for three, maybe four road trips of significant length coming up over the next several months. All of them will involve significant County Counting components. While I’ve put a big dent into my quest to visit every county in the United States, the total still represents considerably less than half of those available.…

  • Duckpins!

    An interesting conversation took place on Twitter recently between two regular Twelve Mile Circle readers, @CTMQ and @oxwof. They linked me in at the tail-end of their friendly discussion about two unusual and quite rare variations of Ten-pin bowling: Duckpins and Candlepins. They’d answered most of their questions by the time I arrived on the…

  • That Recurring State Line

    A random Twelve Mile Circle reader became an unwitting inspiration for this article simply because of where he or she lived. The little dot within Idaho on my Google Analytics dashboard mentioned State Line. That seemed too good to be true. I’ve done plenty of articles about border towns although I’d never noticed that one…

  • Centers of Michigan

    For once I wasn’t looking for the geographic center of something, as problematic as that could be given various definitions. Not in Michigan. And for the record, the town of St. Louis claimed to be the “middle of the mitten.” Even so, this moves to a spot a few miles north-northwest of Cadillac taking the…

  • Newsworthy River Cutoffs

    Rivers can make great boundaries when they cooperate. Frequently they do not. These creatures of nature flow where they want to flow. Sometimes they erode deep furrows through solid rock, changing course only after eons pass. Other times they cross alluvial plains, shifting into multiple ephemeral streams simply awaiting the next flood. Problems will undoubtedly…

  • Ramble On

    It’s the Thanksgiving weekend and I’m feeling a bit lazy. I think I’ll just ramble on for awhile instead of writing a real article. Those of you reading from countries without a similar holiday may not understand much about Thanksgiving. In the United States it involves several days of overeating to the point of immobility,…

  • Directional West Virginia

    I spent the last several articles talking about West Virginia so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to add one more. The introductory post mentioned the oddly named West Virginia Northern Community College. Could I find places in West Virginia that represented each of the four cardinal directions? I guess I could have picked a different…

  • Counting West Virginia, Day 3 (The U)

    We took one of the more inefficient routes from Wheeling to Morgantown, West Virginia. There didn’t appear to be any convenient, straight-line track even if we’d wanted to use it. However, we pushed it to an extreme. The third day involved a long U-shaped path that rambled along the Ohio River for awhile before dipping…

  • Counting West Virginia, Day 2 (Progress)

    The rain that began the previous afternoon continued all night. It lifted, however, just as we began the first full day of our adventure. I probably would have headed to Pittsburgh’s two famous funiculars, the Duquesne Incline and the Monongahela Incline had I been alone. However I had my older son with me so I…

  • Counting West Virginia, Day 1 (Let’s Begin)

    I don’t feature the most obvious geo-oddities of the United States anymore unless I plan to actually visit them in person. Perhaps a few longtime Twelve Mile Circle readers noticed the foreshadowing when I discussed the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia a few days ago. Maybe others saw photos I began to post on the…