Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Twelve Mile Circle

  • And So

    I’ve paid close attention to country names during my many years of combing through 12MC access logs. Naturally I’ve looked for patterns and trends. I’m not sure what drew my particular attention to the names of nations containing the conjunction AND. It was probably one of those days when multiple instances appeared by chance. I…

  • Appalachian Loop, Part 6 (Seeing is Believing)

    I knew I needed to create my own fun when I chose to drive through an area that didn’t cater much to outsiders. The people of Appalachia are friendly and always seem welcoming, so that wasn’t the issue. It’s simply that tourism isn’t a major preoccupation there. It didn’t help that my adventure happened at…

  • Appalachian Loop, Part 5 (Bridges)

    Several months ago I went on a fifty mile cycling adventure on a bright, late-summer morning in Maryland. Afterwards I made an effort to describe the Bridges of Frederick County that I’d encountered. The lack of reader response didn’t deter me from my emerging fascination, either. It seems I have a thing for bridges, covered…

  • Appalachian Loop, Part 4 (Hatfield and McCoy)

    I wondered what we might do during our brief Appalachian adventure beyond my stated purpose. Originally I simply wanted to collect Virginia’s final counties. I would have been happy to drive the full distance without stopping although that wouldn’t have been fair to my passengers. However, there didn’t seem to be much in the way…

  • Appalachian Loop, Part 3 (Cultural Threads)

    Appalachia described more than a physical geography. It described a proudly self-reliant people who’d lived within these hills and hollows on their own wits for more than two centuries. I mentioned some of my perceptions after I visited Kentucky in 2013. It would be all to easy to reduce Appalachia to unfair hillbilly stereotypes. Naturally…

  • Appalachian Loop, Part 2 (Vistas)

    Notions of endless horizons came to mind as I prepared for an Appalachian Loop. We would cross mountaintops, dip into hollows and follow valley flatlands along tumbling rivers amid early signs of spring. This journey promised stunning scenery in a little-visited and often under-appreciated rural preserve. People who ventured into Appalachia as tourists usually came…

  • Appalachian Loop, Part 1 (The Quest)

    It began with a simple premise. Finish Virginia. The Commonwealth of Virginia was a particularly difficult journey for County Counters due to its odd configuration of 95 counties and 38 independent cities. It also happened to be my home state. I’d long been irritated that I still hadn’t completed it. I’d chipped away at the…

  • Odds and Ends 12

    It’s been quite awhile since I posted one of the recurring Odds and Ends articles. I had a bunch of small items to share, so why not? People seemed to like them. I considered that #12 must have been special because it was twelfth in line and Twelve Mile Circle liked to celebrate all things…

  • Making Guinea Bissau

    I dug a little deeper into the visitor logs after I finished celebrating Twelve Mile Circle’s millionth visitor. Years ago I used to highlight the initial visitor from each nation. However, I stopped that after I’d attracted people to the site from just about everywhere. Nonetheless, there were a few stubborn holdouts and the logs…

  • Thanks a Million

    Longtime readers know that I check user statistics for Twelve Mile Circle daily. However, I don’t often examine figures that go all the way back to the earliest days of the blog. I did that recently, and to my surprise discovered that visitors had arrived from more than one million distinct sources since its inception.…

Latest Comments

  2. what is the total population that lives now in the land given back to Virginia should it be part of…

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