Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Twelve Mile Circle

  • Almost Landlocked

    Trivia. Trick questions. Fun Stuff. I love a good, lazy Sunday. Landlocked, double landlocked, borderlocking and boundary crosses have occupied my thoughts at various moments over the years. However, what about places not landlocked, but just barely? We all have our favorite territories that touch the sea by the thinnest of margins. Which ones would…

  • Tangier Island on ESPN

    ESPN has been airing promotional videos featuring Tangier Island, a small marshy inhabited locale within Virginia’s portion of the Chesapeake Bay. The premise is that Tangier Island is the biggest (per capita) sports town in America. I’ve been getting some pretty impressive website traffic from Google as a result. For First Time Visitors: Welcome to…

  • Even More Unusual Signs

    It’s been about fourteen months since I posted an installment of odd signs that I’d encountered during my travels. I like unusual things whether they’re geo-oddities or mundane objects that seem out of whack. Occasionally I feel compelled to share them even if nobody else can summon the same level of enthusiasm. If they cause…

  • Northernmost Southern Hemispheric Glacier

    I discussed the southernmost glaciers in the northern hemisphere in the last installment and found some surprising answers. Today I take the opposite tack and examine the northernmost glaciers in the southern hemisphere. Let’s start again by reviewing the worldwide glacier map I discovered on the U.S. Geological Survey site. Maybe Cayambe Again? To recap…

  • Southernmost Northern Hemispheric Glacier

    My trip to Alaska got me thinking about snow, ice and glaciation. There were glaciers aplenty on the Kenai Peninsula but that’s not unexpected at sixty degrees north of the equator. Where, I wondered, was the southernmost glacier in the northern hemisphere? It’s not the first time my mind has wandered in this basic direction.…

  • Chesapeake Bay Car Ferries

    I’ve noticed queries from various search engines that wonder whether car ferries cross the Chesapeake Bay. Apparently my United States Domestic Ferries page scores high on a related sets of queries but it doesn’t provide this specific answer. That’s because my page deals with the present situation and it doesn’t delve into the historical record.…

  • Suriname’s Disputed Borders

    So this is Suriname. Go ahead and take a look at its shape relative to its neighbors, Guyana and French Guiana. These are the three Guianas. They all line up in a tiny, tidy row on the northeast corner of South American along the Atlantic Ocean. Suriname was once Dutch Guiana, a colony of the…

  • Summer is Over

    Summer is over on the northern side of the equator but probably not for the reasons you expected. I suppose it’s determined by what one considers “end” and “summer” but I’ve recorded unmistakable signs, not so much upon the physical world but through digital fingerprints. There are several candidates that could mark the end of…

  • Texas Borderlocking

    It’s been a long time since I’ve touched upon the borderlocking phenomenon. Many new readers have entered into the Twelve Mile Circle in subsequent months. Of course they have no idea what I’m talking about. Others may have a vague recollection but might need to refresh their memories. Go ahead and open Layers of Borderlocking…

  • Prime Meridian Capital Cities

    School must be back in session. I can sense that must have happened because I’m capturing an exact phrase from multiple Internet Protocol addresses in my search engine query logs: “The Primer Meridian runs through what two capital cities?“ Could it be a Coincidence? I think not. I remember those bygone days of excessive homework…

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  5. Park ranger at Chalmette (New Orleans) Battlefield let me pull up the Union Jack 20 years ago. My dad would…