Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: Roads

  • Rotonda Elsewhere

    The Italian word rotonda means the same as the English word rotunda. They both derived from the Latin word rotundus meaning round. I’d tugged that etymological thread in Rotonda West. However, Rotonda West wasn’t the only Rotonda. Far from it. Many more existed although usually in Italy as one would expect, or in places where…

  • Literal Roads to Nowhere

    Nowhere makes occasional appearances on Twelve Mile Circle. I guess I liked the underlying concept of a place of nowhere, which by definition had to be somewhere. So I mined this topic pretty hard with articles like Middle of Nowhere and X to Nowhere. I referenced it more recently in the latest Odds and Ends…

  • By George, Part 2

    With numerous places named for British Kings George I, II and III already examined and set-aside in the previous article, it was time to turn my attention to IV, V and VI. This would be more difficult. The first set of Georges ruled for a contiguous period of more than a century, from 1714 to…

  • Appalachian Loop, Part 6 (Seeing is Believing)

    I knew I needed to create my own fun when I chose to drive through an area that didn’t cater much to outsiders. The people of Appalachia are friendly and always seem welcoming, so that wasn’t the issue. It’s simply that tourism isn’t a major preoccupation there. It didn’t help that my adventure happened at…

  • Appalachian Loop, Part 5 (Bridges)

    Several months ago I went on a fifty mile cycling adventure on a bright, late-summer morning in Maryland. Afterwards I made an effort to describe the Bridges of Frederick County that I’d encountered. The lack of reader response didn’t deter me from my emerging fascination, either. It seems I have a thing for bridges, covered…

  • Appalachian Loop, Part 3 (Cultural Threads)

    Appalachia described more than a physical geography. It described a proudly self-reliant people who’d lived within these hills and hollows on their own wits for more than two centuries. I mentioned some of my perceptions after I visited Kentucky in 2013. It would be all to easy to reduce Appalachia to unfair hillbilly stereotypes. Naturally…

  • Appalachian Loop, Part 1 (The Quest)

    It began with a simple premise. Finish Virginia. The Commonwealth of Virginia was a particularly difficult journey for County Counters due to its odd configuration of 95 counties and 38 independent cities. It also happened to be my home state. I’d long been irritated that I still hadn’t completed it. I’d chipped away at the…

  • Odds and Ends 12

    It’s been quite awhile since I posted one of the recurring Odds and Ends articles. I had a bunch of small items to share, so why not? People seemed to like them. I considered that #12 must have been special because it was twelfth in line and Twelve Mile Circle liked to celebrate all things…

  • Thanks a Million

    Longtime readers know that I check user statistics for Twelve Mile Circle daily. However, I don’t often examine figures that go all the way back to the earliest days of the blog. I did that recently, and to my surprise discovered that visitors had arrived from more than one million distinct sources since its inception.…

  • 2016 Travel Plans

    A new year dawned on Twelve Mile Circle as I turned my eye towards another batch of travel adventures. Plans began to fall into place. They won’t approach the stratospheric heights of a very ambitious 2015 travel season although they’ll still be substantive from my perspective. As always, I like to post my general plans…