Category: Borders
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Traveling’s Greatest Hits
It occurred to me, as I wrote two recent travelogues, that I’d visited a lot of interesting places in the last few years. I recorded my thoughts and impressions from those journeys on the pages of Twelve Mile Circle. The intent was to describe my adventures while still fresh in my mind. Looking back through…
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You Complete Me
Washington and Idaho seemed to have a little bit of a romance going on with a couple of their towns. Their names could stand alone, however they paired rather nicely in the form of meaningful symmetry. Those names weren’t coincidental either. They were completely intentional. New and Old First came the curious case of Newport,…
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Reader Mailbag 2
Every once in awhile I receive an overwhelming number of excellent finds from the Twelve Mile Circle community. Last time I called the collection “Reader Mailbag.” I simply tacked the number 2 onto that older title in a nod to my lack of creativity for the current installment. To be considered for the Reader Mailbag…
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Great Allegheny Passage, Day 4 (Meyersdale to Cumberland)
The final day, like the end of all great adventures, was bittersweet. Nobody wanted to stop and yet we all had our lives to get back to and our responsibilities awaiting us that needed attention the next day. Most of the day’s ride would fly noticeably downhill. All of the gradual elevation we’d earned over…
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Avoiding the Temptation
It sat there in front of me, so tempting, so wanting to be bestowed with a clickbait title on this 12MC article. I could have called it Sex Folk or maybe Folk Sex. Certainly that would have attracted some undeserved attention and a few extra eyeballs. However, for what purpose? People who come to the…
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Ouse
I came across the oddly named River Great Ouse as I researched Pathway to Bedford. The river ran through Bedford, the County Town of Bedfordshire. It amused me even further to discover that locals pronounce it somewhat akin to “Ooze”. A body of water likened to a great ooze seemed awful to me. Hopefully it…
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Highpoint to Lowpoint
Twelve Mile Circle received an intriguing question from reader “Cary” a few days ago. Cary, a professional mapmaker, noticed something interesting while conducting research: the amazing proximity of Minnesota’s highest point of elevation to its lowest. This led to a natural question. Was this the shortest distance between a state highpoint and a lowpoint? I’d…
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Shortest Town + State Combo
I wondered what town and state had the fewest letters in its collective name. For example, my hometown of Arlington, Virginia had 17 letters. That wasn’t very short. Why would anyone care? I don’t know. Maybe someone had a job where they had to write down their town and state repeatedly to the point where…
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Lake Neusiedl
All that talk of endorheic basins in County Divided got me wondering about similar conditions in other unexpected places. It seemed farfetched to find an area lacking natural drainage to the sea on the Great Plains of North America. So did a similar condition in central Europe. I searched around and the largest place in…
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County Divided
Look to the far northwestern corner of North Dakota, right up next to Canada and Montana. There sits a county with a curious name, Divide (map). It appeared somewhat rectangular like many other counties on the sparsely-populated Great Plains. Few natural features could take the place of arbitrary straight lines in this emptiness. I’d encountered…