Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: Terrain

  • Rocky Mountain National Park

    Larimer and Grand Counties, Colorado, USA (October 2002) We came to Denver for a wedding but we arrived early so we could travel up to Estes Park, Colorado (map). That serves as the gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park. Summer quickly transitions into winter here. Trail Ridge Road through the upper elevations of park closed…

  • Mesa Verde National Park

    Montezuma County, Colorado, USA (May 1992) Mesa Verde National Park, the “green table” of Colorado’s contribution to the Four Corners region contains some of the most spectacular and largest cliff dwellings ever constructed. Precolumbian native Americans, sometimes referred to as the Ancient Pueblo People or the Anasazi after the Navajo word for “ancient ones,” inhabited…

  • San Diego Zoo and Safari Park

    San Diego, California (2005) If you’ve been reading these travel pages you know our little guy loves animals. Naturally in San Diego we had to go to the famous San Diego Zoo and its affiliated Safari Park. The zoo was great (map), but the Safari Park had smaller crowds and more open space so that…

  • La Jolla Coast

    San Diego County, California (2005) Next we went to La Jolla with some of our family who live in the area that were kind enough to act as tour guides. We wandered down to the Ellen Browning Scripps Park along the Pacific shoreline (map). The southwestern corner led to the crescent shaped Children’s Pool, also…

  • Harding Icefield

    Kenai Fjords National Park, Kenai Peninsula Borough, Alaska, USA (July 2010) Flightseeing is a great way to view the expansive Harding Icefield (map) on the southeastern side of the Kenai Peninsula, a part of Kenai Fjords National Park. Tours operate from all of the major towns in the vicinity including Seward, Homer and Soldotna. Options…

  • Kenai Fjords National Park

    Near Seward, Kenai Peninsula Borough, Alaska, USA (July 2010) We continued on our exploration of the Kenai Peninsula, leaving our base in Cooper Landing heading towards Seward (map). Here we’d booked a day-long sea excursion through one of several companies that operate moderately-sized boats that cruise through Resurrection Bay and Aialik Bay, two of the…

  • The Homer Spit

    Homer, Kenai Peninsula Borough, Alaska, USA (July 2010) We drove along the Sterling Highway, curving south and passing towns like Clam Gulch, Ninilchik, and Anchor Point, heading ever further down the Kenai Peninsula until we could drive no further. We arrived in Homer and headed towards the famous Homer Spit. Part of the appeal, naturally,…

  • Southeastern Alaska and the Inside Passage

    August 1995 Southeast Alaska Travel Index We captured this image a long time ago on our initial trip to Alaska in 1995. We took a small-ship cruise through Glacier Bay and to Juneau and Sitka. Then we spent several days in Juneau where we did a lot of hiking, went to a nearby glacier and…

  • Exit Glacier

    Seward, Kenai Peninsula Borough, Alaska, USA (July 2010) The vast preponderance of Kenai Fjords National Park is not accessible by automobile. It’s ruggedly inaccessible with the easiest ways to see it by air [see my Harding Icefield page] or by sea [see my Kenai Fjords page]. There is one notable exception: Exit Glacier. It’s not…

  • Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel

    Whittier, Alaska, USA (July 2010) I’d long wanted to traverse the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel heading to Whittier, Alaska and the Prince William Sound (map). The tiny town of Whittier holds a couple hundred people where nearly the entire population lives in a single building. You might wonder why the government built a tunnel nearly…