Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: Nature

  • Last Places in Commonwealth Countries

    The series of Last Places continued. One should feel free to consult the previous articles, Last Place in England and Last Places in Asia, to understand the premise. I found it more difficult to uncover examples this time so I broadened the base, extending my search to the entire set of the Commonwealth of Nations…

  • Last Places in Asia

    The second time I searched on the exact phrase the “Last place in [geographic area] to”… while leaving the remainder of the statement blank, I focused on countries in Asia. I knew it would be more difficult than the examination of England. However, I didn’t figure it would be nearly impossible. Many countries produced not…

  • Select African Superlatives

    I thought I’d lump another set of somewhat related items together as I continued to cull the enormous backlog of possible Twelve Mile Circle topics. However, they didn’t have much in common except that they all involved continental Africa. Two involved geographical observations and the other two related to geological oddities. All of them piqued…

  • Even More Weird Placenames

    Twelve Mile Circle has been on a bit of an odd placenames fixation as of late. I found a few more examples. However, they didn’t have enough of a story behind them to justify an entire article on any one of them. So I figured I’d resurrect an earlier series and title this “Even More…

  • Big Ugly

    I’m working out the details for a short trip in March, a county counting adventure, although I haven’t determined all of the details yet and I’m not quite ready to share the objective. I’ll hit a personal milestone if everything works out as planned so I have plenty of motivation. Part of the drive will…

  • Lowest Landlocked Elevation

    All sorts of interesting facts emerged as I mashed-up Wikipedia’s List of Elevation Extremes by Country with Landlocked Country. I wondered about the lowest elevation of a landlocked nation as I sorted through results in various ways. It turned out that there were several such countries with elevations below sea-level. Anybody could focus on elevation…

  • Florida Highlands?

    I’ve been to Florida many times and always considered it to be incredibly flat. It’s one of the flattest of all states with a mean elevation of only 100 feet (30 metres). Only Delaware edges it out. It definitely represents the smallest elevation span within its borders, extending from sea level to only 345 ft…

  • The Only One, Part 2

    If it were Only One, how could there be a Part Two? I discarded that paradox and decided to plow forward anyway. The premise, to recap, was rather simple. I typed the exact phrase “The only one in [name of a country]” into various Internet search engines and observed the results. Part 2 focused on…

  • The Only One

    I started playing a little game over the weekend using a search engine and the exact phrase “The only one in [name of a country].” Much of the time this query resulted in lists of exotic automobiles for some odd reason, or vacation properties with excessive hyperbole. More amusing results floated to the surface every…

  • Center of the Nation, Part 5 (Wildlife)

    My route crossed paths with all sorts of wildlife, some more wild than others as we rolled through endless terrain in a land largely devoid of people. We never pushed deep into backcountry so I didn’t see anything too exotic — and no rattlesnakes thank goodness, which were supposedly quite common — still our roadside…