Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Twelve Mile Circle

  • Osage Orange

    It seemed strange to fixate on a single tree for more than a decade but that’s exactly what happened. I notice it a few weeks every autumn and then quickly forget about it for another year. That all started sometime around 2013 when I began to ride a stretch of the Capital Crescent Trail along…

  • Great American Beer Festival (and More)

    I hinted at ulterior motives in the last article about my long weekend in Denver. I didn’t travel all the way out there just to casually tour around. Indeed, I had a very specific purpose in mind — checking off a bucket list item in fact — attending the Great American Beer Festival. The Biggest…

  • Broomfield and Denver Weekend

    I’ve been traveling a lot lately. It feels like I just got back from the Pacific Northwest, and before that England, and then I’m heading right back out the door again. This should do it for awhile though; I need some rest. But this trip was a little different because I was there for some…

  • Inland Northwest, Day 7 (Abrupt End)

    What should have been a ten day trip ended unexpectedly on the seventh day. The previous evening our kid who was watching the house called to tell us about our soaking wet basement carpet. Our ancient boiler was leaking. So we immediately contacted our insurance provider, a water abatement company, and a plumber, all remotely…

  • Inland Northwest, Day 6 (County-Centric)

    We were now between race days again, with two races down and one more to go. So we could do pretty much whatever we wanted now and I decided to focus on some county counting. It was all virgin territory to me and I intended to cover as much of it as I could during…

  • Inland Northwest, Day 5 (University Loop)

    This was another early morning start although not as early as some of the others. We wouldn’t need to drive very far anymore now that we’d settled into our temporary home in Lewiston, Idaho for four nights in a row. The Washington Race Sunrise came quickly and we soon found ourselves running another half-marathon. Thankfully…

  • 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…

Latest Comments

  3. Osage Orange trees are fairly common in Northern Delaware. I assumed they were native plants. As kids we definitely called…

  4. Enough of them in Northern Delaware that they don’t stand out at all until the fruit drops in the fall.…

  5. That was its original range before people spread it all around. Now it’s in lots of different places, including Oklahoma.