Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Twelve Mile Circle

  • Inland Northwest, Day 4 (Lewis & Clark Country)

    We were now officially between races. A day earlier I ran a half-marathon in Pendleton, Oregon and I had to do it again in Clarkston, Washington the following day. So this was the rest day, or at least it was for me. Most participants in the Mainly Marathons Northwest series repeated the Pendleton race a…

  • Inland Northwest, Day 3 (Let the Races Begin)

    The main reason we went to the Inland Northwest was to run some races. It also became an excuse to experience a part of the country I hadn’t explored much. Either way, the first of the races was finally about to begin. The Oregon Race We walked through the dark to a park along the…

  • Inland Northwest, Day 2 (Walla Walla to Pendleton)

    We awoke in Walla Walla at the beginning of our first full day. We couldn’t check-in at our accommodations in Pendleton, Oregon until mid-afternoon and the drive would only take about an hour. So we needed to find something we could do locally and we got another chance to explore Walla Walla in a little…

  • Inland Northwest, Day 1 (Staging)

    Was there a name for that largely empty space beyond Washington’s Cascades Range and into the Idaho Panhandle? A little research suggested the Inland Northwest, or perhaps a now lesser-used designation, the Inland Empire (not to be confused with a similarly named area of California). Anyway, that’s where I traveled for a few days on…

  • England, Day 10 (More Typical London)

    Unlike the previous day, we focused our final full London day on places more regularly associated with typical tourists. Sometimes we do that. Occasionally I displayed my normal geo-oddity proclivities but mostly it was about cramming as much as possible into the hours before sunset. Hyde Park We liked using the London Underground but sometimes…

  • England, Day 9 (Atypical London)

    Before we left on our trip to England I promised everyone in the family that we would visit at least one thing they absolutely wanted to see. We completed that for the younger kid at Tankfest. Two more bucket list destinations happened during our first full day in London. We’re not a normal family so…

  • England, Day 8 (Onward to London)

    Finally we reached the end of our time in Dorset. I enjoyed that quiet corner of England and I felt we covered it pretty thoroughly. Now we needed to drive back to London where a whole new set of adventures awaited. Stonehenge However, we couldn’t go straight back because of differences between check-out and check-in…

  • England, Day 7 (Tankfest)

    Finally the single event that justified our entire trip to England arrived, the renowned Tankfest. It’s everything the name implies, a festival of military tanks, and it happens only once a year on the grounds of the Tank Museum in Bovington (map). This is what the younger kid wanted as a high school graduation present…

  • England, Day 6 (Bournemouth)

    We didn’t go far but it seemed like a world apart, traveling from an isolated corner of Dorset into its most populous area. That led us to Bournemouth (map), a coastal town along the English Channel. There are so many ancient places in the United Kingdom but this is not one of them. It dates…

  • England, Day 5 (Isle of Purbeck)

    Dorset’s Isle of Purbeck isn’t an island it’s a peninsula. It was probably more isolated and difficult to reach in previous centuries. So maybe it felt like an island to people back when the English Channel was the primary “road” to the outside world. Even now it’s a time-consuming overland drive so I can appreciate…

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