Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: Terrain

  • Mountaineering by Subway

    Let’s climb to the summit of a significant highpoint. This video approaches and then transitions to a panoramic view from the summit of the highest point of elevation in the District of Columbia. But that’s getting a little ahead of the story. Let me explain how I found myself here recently. Here is “Point Reno”…

  • England’s Desert

    England has a desert? When I think desert, I normally envision cacti, sand, camels and that sort of thing, but that’s an inaccurate and stereotypical point of view. A desert doesn’t require scorching heat. Antarctica qualifies as a desert. Some sources even claim that even England has a desert. It is located at Dungeness, a…

  • Greatest Time Zone Jump

    People seem more interested in time zone anomalies than many other quirks I discuss. I know this because I get lots of random one-time visitors to the Twelve Mile Circle via search engines. Invariably they are searching these kinds of queries. I like them too, but I try not to overwhelm my regular readership with…

  • The Wisconsin Highpoint

    Highpointing makes me feel conflicted. I love highpoints conceptually and I have nothing but the greatest admiration for those who collect them. I’ve featured some of these people in the past and of course I’m not beyond partaking myself whether at the state or county level. Highpoints, quite simply, represent perfect fodder for discussion on…

  • Island Isolation doesn’t Require an Island

    Juneau is located in Alaska’s southeastern panhandle and serves as the state capital. No roads connect Juneau to the outside world even though it’s clearly part of mainland North America. Access is by sea or by air only. Rather than describe the situation it’s easier to show it. Notice how Juneau hugs a narrow seaside…

  • Walk Across the Mississippi River

    Can any mortal human walk across the Mississippi River? Yes. It’s easy to cross the Mississippi at its source. The Mississippi River begins its long journey in northern Minnesota at Lake Itasca. Here the Mississippi starts as a small stream. Just about anyone can stroll right across it using conveniently placed stepping-stones. This humble beginning…

  • Inconvenient Rivers

    Those pesky rivers! People go to great trouble to designate a river as a boundary, decide who has ownership or how it will be split, draw all those maps, and then the river has the audacity to jump its bank and form a new channel. Does this mean the boundary automatically changes too? Of course…

  • Island on an Island

    Sometimes an island has a pond or lake that also happens to contain an island. Twelve Mile Circle likes to call that second, subsidiary island an “island-on-an-island.” Beaver Island, Michigan Beaver Island is the largest on Lake Michigan. It contains several lowlands, marshy areas, and ponds which makes it a perfect candidate for islands-on-an-island. We…

  • Hydrological Apex of North America

    Twelve Mile Circle has discussed watersheds and continental divides before. We’ve crossed the Great Divide in Colorado together. We’ve visited the Red River of the North in Fargo, North Dakota that drains to the Arctic Ocean. And we’ve even mentioned a small corner of Canada that drains into the Gulf of Mexico. So divides are…

  • Lowest Elevation in Nepal

    This is Mount Everest (map), a topic way to obvious for the Twelve Mile Circle to consider. What could I add? Everyone knows about it, every map of the area shows it, and resources galore focus on its magnificence. Its national attitudinal opposite, however — the lowest elevation in Nepal — is a different story…