Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: Water

  • Schwebefähre

    Twelve Mile Circle received a wonderful suggestion from loyal reader “Joshua D” probably six months ago. He mentioned the schwebefähre (“suspension ferry“) in Rendsburg, Germany. These structures went by various names in different languages including “transporter bridge” in English. They were so odd, so whimsical, so amazingly impractical that I found them difficult to comprehend,…

  • Sunrise

    Strange queries land on Twelve Mile Circle. Recently I noticed search engines referencing questions in the form of “does the sun rise (or set) in [name a location].” and sending them to the site. Since I’m pretty sure those would be daily events for most of us except perhaps at extreme latitudes during very specific…

  • Turpan Depression

    Are you ready for another installment in my occasional series on lowpoints? I am. Everyone always focuses on the greatest of mountains and the highest of elevations. Lowpoints need a little love too, especially those below sea level, and the further down the better. I turned my attention to China, a nation that does not…

  • Ireland, Part 5 (Maintaining My Lists)

    I couldn’t change my personality quirks even though I changed my location. In fact, a few peculiarities rooted in my mild compulsion to count and collect things seemed to be enhanced in this kind of situation. I searched earnestly for attractions aligning with those interests and pursued a means to incorporate them into the larger…

  • Ireland, Part 4 (On the Water)

    I enjoy boat rides. Ireland is surrounded by water. Is it surprising that I found myself cruising over the waves? No of course not. However, I didn’t expect it to happen four times during my trip even if a couple of those were fleeting encounters. Skellig Michael Skellig Michael ranked high on my list of…

  • Ireland, Part 3 (Wild Atlantic Way)

    Ireland designated a tourist route along its western edge between Donegal and Cork as the “Wild Atlantic Way.” Distinctive signs including a logo of what appeared to be something like ww — although stretched out farther like waves — marking the path. We didn’t follow the route on purpose although we encountered its road signs…

  • 4 Nations, 2 Tripoints, 1 Lake

    I thought I’d written an article about Africa’s Lake Chad a long time ago. Naturally I was surprised to see it still listed on my potential topics spreadsheet when I culled it recently. A quick search of the 12MC WordPress database found minor references to Lake Chad and little else. So I guess I should…

  • Laguna del Carbón

    I’ve written about elevation lowpoints previously including Lake Assal (Africa), Lake Eyre (Australia) and Death Valley (North America). It’s been awhile since I wrote about one of those. Naturally this seemed like a good opportunity to turn my attention to South America. I don’t provide as much content about that area as I should, probably…

  • Spit

    I’ve certainly featured spits of land on 12MC before. They’ve come up in the context of Shingle Spits and in a very specialized sense in one of my favorite geographic forms, the always wonderful tombolo. I was able to visit a particularly nice example of a spit in Homer, on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula. I’ve discussed…

  • Lockport

    The website hit came from Lockport, Illinois. Well, Lockport sounded familiar, although from a different time and place than Illinois. It also seemed quite descriptive, a lock on a canal combined with a port (or perhaps a portage). Locks would be ideal places for settlements during the heyday of canal travel a century or more…