Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Twelve Mile Circle

  • Ohio River, Part 1 (Orientation)

    The COVID pandemic began to wane as summer approached. Sure, we’d taken pseudo-vacations since its arrival. We went to a couple of lakes and the beach, and experienced an almost normal trip to the South Carolina Lowcountry. Basically we went to places where we could hide for awhile and stay away from other people. So…

  • Carolina Wetlands, Part 8 (Rounding It Out)

    Well, we did it. We made it to the final article in the Carolina Wetlands series. Thank you for following along vicariously on my journey. Often I use the final article as a catch-all, a way to catalog stories that don’t fit anywhere else. It also lets me add a few items to my lists,…

  • Carolina Wetlands, Part 7 (Breweries During COVID)

    This is the part where I get to talk about breweries. Longtime Twelve Mile Circle readers know I’ve been to a lot of them over the years. Those same readers also know I write beer pages more for myself than for them. In fact, they’re probably the least popular pages on the site. That’s alright;…

  • Carolina Wetlands, Part 6 (Ruins and Tombs)

    South Carolina sure loved its old buildings whether lovingly maintained or reduced to rubble. In particularly her people revered historic churches with their requisite cemeteries filled with live oaks and draped in Spanish moss. Old churches and weathered cemeteries became a recurring theme on my journey. Or sometimes just the family cemeteries of long-lost plantations…

  • Carolina Wetlands, Part 5 (The Swamp Fox)

    So we finally get to Brigadier General Francis Marion, the so-called Swamp Fox. He was born on the family plantation sometime around 1732 although no definitive record exists, strangely enough. Then he spent much of his life there except for brief forays that included a stint in the French and Indian War. Nonetheless he was…

  • Carolina Wetlands, Part 4 (This Means War)

    I expected to run into a ton of Civil War history during my excursions. After all, the first shots of the conflict happened nearby at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. So it surprised me to see a lot less than I figured within the pocket I explored. There was some of course, but not much…

  • Carolina Wetlands, Part 3 (The Great Outdoors)

    I bypassed all sorts of interesting and historical places because I wanted to avoid indoor spaces during the pandemic. So I searched for outdoor attractions to keep us busy. Typically we do a lot of this on our trips anyway, but we really took it over the top this time. A whole lot of walking,…

  • Carolina Wetlands, Part 2 (All About the Water)

    Water, water everywhere! Well what else would anyone expect? After all, the whole area was basically a swamp. They even called one big chunk of South Carolina the Lowcountry for its very specific lack of elevation and percolating water table. Liquid gurgled, flowed, pooled or crashed just about everywhere I stepped during the week. So…

  • Carolina Wetlands, Part 1 (Padding the Count)

    Hopefully this will be the last set of articles where I ever have to mention the COVID-19 pandemic. Maybe this will all seem quaint five or ten years from now when someone stumbles across this page. For now though it continues to shape how I travel and where I go. Even so, life goes on…

  • Marigot on Market Day

    Wednesday Market – Place du Marché; Marigot, Saint-Martin (March 2011) An international border splits the island of St. Martin into French and Dutch halves. Marigot serves at the French capital and the largest French town with about 6,000 residents. It sits on the western side of the island on a picturesque bay, facing towards Anguilla…

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