Category: Terrain
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Proof! West Coast Sunrise over Water
I mentioned Mathew Hargreaves’ achievement a few weeks ago. He was the reader who undertook a two-year effort to document a genuine West Coast Sunrise over Water. He described his efforts as they unfolded in a series of comments on that earlier article. We speculated that one might be able to witness this unusual geo-oddity…
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Rocky Mountain High
One would be tempted to think that I’m a huge fan of the late John Denver given that I’ve featured his signature performances not once, but now a second time. I have a rather neutral feeling for his body of work, actually. His songs don’t inspire me but they don’t repel me either; they’re simply……
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Adventures along Maryland I-70/68
The weather turned nasty on the second day of my MDVAWV adventure. Suddenly my hiking plans no longer seemed quite as attractive as the day before. I took to the road and explored through western Maryland instead. The route I describe below is a composite. The portion east of Hagerstown took place as I drove…
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Circling the MDVAWV Tripoint
I tagged along while my wife attended a work-related conference in West Virginia’s eastern panhandle. The in-laws watched the kids back home. That provided me with a rare couple of days to wander around the woods while my wife schmoozed with conference attendees. The area was amazingly rich in significant events that shaped a nation.…
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Transcontinental Clip
I like to photograph unusual signs as I travel, either for my personal amusement of for future reference. One such occasion presented itself at the Union Station train museum during my recent visit to Ogden, Utah. It displayed a large map of the original Overland Route, the one known better as the Transcontinental Railroad. It…
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Thelma and Louise Route Map
What would possibly possess the Twelve Mile Circle to examine a 20-year-old chick flick practically frame-by-frame for most of a weekend? Blame it on a skewed sense of curiosity fanned by random search engine queries I’d observed in my web logs. I’d mentioned the movie Thelma and Louise only once on 12MC, and only as…
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Mountainous Claims
I noticed a recent record in the website logs that geolocated to Mountain View, California. That’s hardly a unique occurrence. I’ve had plenty of readers from Mountain View in the past. The only difference is that I happened to wonder whether Mountain View actually had a mountain view this time. I don’t know why. That…
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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…
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National Preserves
I mentioned 12MC reader Scott a couple of weeks ago in reference to the Park You Cannot Visit. He also set me up with a lot of other National Park Service trivia that I’ll cover from time-to-time as I’m able to work it into the publication schedule. As an example, he wondered if I’d ever…
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The Loneliest Road in the USA
What is the “Loneliest Road in America?” Life Magazine claimed that it was the stretch of U.S. Route 50 running through Nevada, in a 1986 article. I don’t know if anyone still claims that today, or if it was even true twenty-five years ago. Additionally, there are probably far lonelier roads in Australia and Canada…