Category: Elevation

  • U.S. States’ Lowest County Highpoints

    The setup might take a little explanation. I wanted to find the lowest county highpoint in each of the fifty United States. There would only be one per state based upon a series of lists provided by Peakbagger.com. That might lead to speculation that a better solution would involve examining all county highpoints regardless of…

  • Turpan Depression

    Are you ready for another installment in my occasional series on lowpoints? I am. Everyone always focuses on the greatest of mountains and the highest of elevations. Lowpoints need a little love too, especially those below sea level, and the further down the better. I turned my attention to China, a nation that does not…

  • Ireland, Part 1 (Castles and Ruins)

    My typing fingers grew a little rusty over the last couple of weeks. Those of you who follow 12MC on Twitter already knew that I was in Ireland because I posted a steady stream of photographs. What may have been less understood was that I wrote all Twelve Mile Circle articles ahead of time. That’s…

  • Laguna del Carbón

    I’ve written about elevation lowpoints previously including Lake Assal (Africa), Lake Eyre (Australia) and Death Valley (North America). It’s been awhile since I wrote about one of those. Naturally this seemed like a good opportunity to turn my attention to South America. I don’t provide as much content about that area as I should, probably…

  • Not the Usual State Capital Trivia

    It was time to clear my list of unwritten articles again. While doing that I noticed several of them involved state capitals, or their capitol buildings. Well, I’m not sure what the “usual” State Capital trivia might be much less the unusual. Nonetheless, let’s consider this an article on topics that the average layperson may…

  • Canada’s Pocket Desert

    Canada allegedly contains exactly one lonely desert, or maybe none at all. It depends on who you consult. They’ve also coined various names for the anomaly known colloquially as “Canada’s Pocket Desert” including Okanagan, Osoyoos and Nk’mip. Whatever the designation, it’s located adjacent to the Town of Osoyoos in southern British Columbia. So it sits…

  • Confluence of Confluences

    I began to consider confluences while pondering the Confluence Brewing Company during my recent Geo-BREWities exercise. Maybe I should credit Google Map’s auto-completion function for the suggestion after I typed the brewery name into an address bar. It noted that at least one town of Confluence existed. A quick check of the Geographic Names Information…

  • Geo-BREWities

    My interests collide every once in awhile. I’ve mentioned my unnatural compulsion to visit breweries several times before. So, an overlap shouldn’t come as a surprise to regular readers. This time, an industry publication mentioned a beer dinner where they paired courses with beverages from Oxbow Beer in Maine. A brewery named for an oxbow…

  • Separate but Tallest

    Sometime examining something from a different angle provides interesting results. Other times it provides only the previous results, just with a different angle. Today it was the latter albeit with one unrelated twist at the end. I thought about a 12MC article from 2010, New Highpoint for the Netherlands. It pointed out the interesting situation…

  • Finding the Original Purpose

    I’m always on the lookout for unusual trivia. For example, something stuck in my mind a couple of years ago when I learned about the Augusta Canal. Logically it’s located in Augusta, Georgia, but that’s not what mattered. There was another claim that took a variety of forms. So I put that one on the…