Tag: North Carolina
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Ancient River
The recent Twelve Mile Circle journey to western North Carolina included one of my favorite activities, whitewater rafting. The boys were finally old enough to join us although we still kept it pretty easy on them. So we stuck primarily to a series of Class II and Class III rapids (moderate to intermediate). This made…
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Western North Carolina, Part 6 (County Counting Adventures)
Each Twelve Mile Circle journey has its own specific objectives. The western North Carolina adventure focused heavily on the burgeoning craft brewing scene. Collectively they also share common objectives, principally the pursuit of geo-oddities along with opportunities to pad my county counting totals. I thought I did well. I adding eighteen new counties with fourteen…
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Western North Carolina, Part 5 (Exclamation Point)
Twelve Mile Circle faced a bit of a geographic dilemma in western North Carolina. An issue began to appear towards the end of the week. Indeed, I might risk a doughnut hole county if I wasn’t careful. That condition would occur if I counted a bunch of contiguous counties and then left one in the…
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Western North Carolina, Part 4 (Beer Tourism)
Originally we’d hoped to travel north to the Thousand Islands region of New York. Unfortunately we waited too long to make our plans and couldn’t find anywhere decent to stay. Anyway, I quickly shifted my thoughts to Asheville, North Carolina, a place that had been on my mind for quite awhile. It combined an abundance…
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Western North Carolina, Part 3 (Cherokee Loop)
The second day-trip loop from Asheville plowed nearly due west onto the domain of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation. Then we continued into Great Smoky Mountains National Park for another easy U.S. state highpoint capture. I guess it was actually more of an out-and-back. Technically, one could cut the corner just a bit…
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Western North Carolina, Part 2 (Blue Ridge Parkway Loop)
I’m going to take a little bit of a departure from the usual Twelve Mile Circle travelogue format. I’ll actually suggest a couple of simple one-day itineraries. They mirror actual trips starting from our home base for the week in Asheville, North Carolina. Readers should feel free to customize them at their discretion. Admittedly, they…
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Western North Carolina, Part 1 (Asheville)
Subscribers to the 12MC Twitter site likely noticed that I’ve been on vacation recently and probably already understood that it foreshadowed another travelogue. You’ll be happy with the next several articles if you like those. I was in Western North Carolina using Asheville as my base of operations for the week. I wasn’t sure exactly…
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Hot Springs Everywhere
Twelve Mile Circle has featured hot springs before. There was Hot Springs, Virginia in Taking a Bath. There was Hot Springs County, Wyoming and its county seat of Thermopolis in The Largest Smallest US County. Geothermal activities existed in many places and I’d taken notice plenty of times. Nonetheless it mildly surprised me when I…
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Hawaii on the Mainland
Reader Joel expressed mild surprise at a Hawaiian-inspired spot in Utah that I’d referenced. I’m mentioned the town of Loa named by a former resident of Hawaii honoring the towering mountain Mauna Loa. He wondered about “names out of place” in general while I continued to fixate on Hawaii. I complemented his comment with Diamondhead,…
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Beaufort or Badminton
Two towns sharing the exact same name sat not too far from each other in the Carolinas. Colonial settlers arrived on various points along that swath of coastline at around the same time. So this increased the odds of a relationship between identical names. Indeed, that was the case albeit with a twist. The Beauforts…