Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: Water

  • Mackinac’s Orbit, Part 10 (Into the Highlands)

    A typical tourist on Mackinac Island sticks pretty close to town. Maybe they’ll take a carriage tour inland or head over to the golf course. Still others may venture around the perimeter on a bicycle along Lake Shore Road. But there are other spots that get less attention. I wouldn’t call any of them “obscure”…

  • Mackinac’s Orbit, Part 8 (In Town)

    I’ll just come out and say it, Mackinac Island is an odd place (map). Lots of people love this scenic spot on Lake Huron for that specific reason, and I admit I enjoyed my brief time there too. But it was disorienting and bewildering to this first time visitor. It felt like a topsy-turvy version…

  • Mackinac’s Orbit, Part 7 (St. Ignace)

    I realize that I mentioned Mackinaw City as a cheaper alternative to staying on Mackinac Island. However, we didn’t actually stay there. Instead, we crossed over to St. Ignace on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It was a quieter town, a little further out of the way, and didn’t experience the same levels of visitor density. Don’t…

  • Mackinac’s Orbit, Part 6 (Mackinaw City)

    We drew ever closer to our ultimate target. Only a fifteen minute ferry ride separated us from Mackinac Island today, a place we could see quite clearly from the mainland shore. However, we focused on Mackinaw City and its immediate surroundings so the island had to wait. Mackinaw City is nothing like Mackinac Island despite…

  • Mackinac’s Orbit, Part 5 (Eastern U.P.)

    Staying in St. Ignace for a week was a whole lot cheaper than staying on Mackinac Island. It was also a lot easier to use as a base for exploring the eastern end of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Once, many years ago, I drove along the southern edge of the U.P. and stayed overnight. Other than…

  • Mackinac’s Orbit, Part 4 (Petoskey)

    One day we decided to explore Emmet County, at the northwestern tip of Michigan’s lower peninsula. Prior to that, my only exposure to this place happened along a brief segment of I-75 barely clipping the county line before crossing the Straights of Mackinac. My entire elapsed time in Emmet lasted mere seconds. However I’d completely…

  • Mackinac’s Orbit, Part 3 (Sault Ste. Marie)

    Now safely ensconced in St. Ignace on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, we could venture out on day-trips from our home base. One such journey brought us even farther up the U.P. to Sault Ste. Marie. This was my first visit to the town but not the first time it appeared in Twelve Mile Circle. I devoted…

  • Mackinac’s Orbit, Part 2 (Counting Fingers)

    The purpose of the trip wasn’t county counting, it was visiting our older kid who worked on Mackinac Island for the summer. Even so, I still had a bunch of uncounted counties in that area so I planned to use that convenient occurrence to my advantage. That’s how a day that normally should involve a…

  • Backroads Accomack

    I’d not spent much time in Accomack County, Virginia before. Well, one time a few years ago I did enjoy a long weekend in Chincoteague at the northern end of the county. I’ve also driven down busy U.S. Route 13 a few time on the way to other places. But the bicycle race “Le Tour…

  • Southern Hills, Day 6 (Georgia Smokies)

    The races we ran on successive mornings were now a distant memory. On this final full day we slept-in and focused on a full slate of roadside amusements instead. We only had to make it to Atlanta to catch our flight the following morning. This time we concentrated on the Georgia side of the tripoint…