Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: Borders

  • Tennessee I-40 Time Zone Crossing

    So you’re driving along Interstate 40 in eastern Tennessee and you want to know where the time changes. Let’s make this easy. It happens between Mile Markers 340 and 341. If you’re driving westbound, going from Eastern Time into Central Time, set your coordinates to: 35.895888°, -84.701530° If you’re driving eastbound, going from Central Time…

  • Little Loudoun Loop

    I traveled an hour west of Washington, DC for a Loudoun Wine Adventure back in 2012. In the time since then, beverage tourism has only increased in this Northern Virginia county. Now visitors can select from about 50 vineyards, 35 breweries, and a smattering of distilleries, cideries, and meaderies within this single jurisdiction. I’m beginning…

  • Niagara Weekend, Part 3 (Down)

    With niceties out of the way including a few hours at Niagara Falls, I could focus on the primary purpose. Three more New York counties needed my attention: Wyoming, Cattaraugus, and Allegany. Collectively they created a significant doughnut hole on my map. Obviously that wouldn’t do so I drafted the most efficient route to grab…

  • Niagara Weekend, Part 2 (Falls Redux)

    I started Twelve Mile Circle back in 2007. Sometimes I wish I could return to those earliest pages and rewrite them though. They didn’t have nearly the thoughtfulness that I applied to later efforts. Even before that though I posted a number of travel topics including a visit to Niagara Falls in 2003. Eventually I…

  • Niagara Weekend, Part 1 (Up)

    I had a three-day weekend coming up and four unvisited counties in western New York staring me in the face. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Of course you are, but how could I sell it to the family? County Counting It’s getting more difficult to reach those unvisited counties to add them to my…

  • Ohio River, Part 10 (Heading Back Upstream)

    All good things must come to an end. So, after spending a week in Louisville, we needed to begin the long journey back home. As before, this unfolded over two days of driving. The penultimate day would be the most arduous day of the trip by design. It was a highly technical route, too complicated…

  • Ohio River, Part 8 (Ark Loop)

    After a warmup loop the day before, we set our sites on something more ambitious. This took us on a course extending northeast of Louisville to the outskirts of Cincinnati. From there we crossed into Indiana and followed the Ohio River. This combined one very specific destination along with some less structured county counting. I…

  • Ohio River, Part 6 (The Big Four)

    Many people suggested the Big Four Bridge when I asked for Louisville suggestions. This spans a half-mile across the Ohio River, connecting the city on the Kentucky side to Jeffersonville, Indiana (map). However, there’s a catch. Only pedestrians can use it. Has my bridge mania finally gone too far? Can I really focus an entire…

  • Ohio River, Part 2 (Portsmouth)

    We began our journey with an easy drive along Interstate highways. I worried a bit about I-81 and its abundant truck traffic on the Friday before a 3-day weekend. Nonetheless we made it through and shot across West Virginia on I-64 unscathed. From there we only had to cut away at Huntington and follow the…

  • Exploring the Mitten, Part 1 (Pivot)

    My county counting hadn’t gone so well this year thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. I did manage to make that one brief trip to Pennsylvania to complete the state. There I picked up a dozen new counties. Not bad. However, that hardly moved the needle overall. I knew one more opportunity loomed as the summer…