Category: U.S. States
-
Finishing West Virginia, Day 3
Flatwoods Monster As I mentioned in the previous post, we spent the night at a nondescript hotel along Interstate 79 in Flatwoods, West Virginia. I’d never heard of Flatwoods although my son registered a flash of recognition. “Isn’t that the home of the Flatwoods Monster?” he wondered as we pulled off the highway. What Flatwoods…
-
Finishing West Virginia, Day 2 (pm)
Further adventures awaited us after our successful morning in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. We still had an entire afternoon remaining. Fewer people lived along the next stretch of our itinerary though. I had to dig a little deeper to find a way to break up the drive. Beautiful scenery surrounded us at every turn although…
-
Finishing West Virginia, Day 2 (am)
Parkersburg to Point Pleasant I woke up early as I always do, so I let my son sleep in for awhile. After running a few miles on the hotel treadmill, after cleaning up and dressing, and after finishing breakfast, I still had some time to kill. Maybe I could take an early-morning stroll through Parkersburg,…
-
Finishing West Virginia, Day 1
We finally began our trip to West Virginia after a two week delay. It made all of the difference. Springtime arrived and the weather approached perfection. My older son — the bird watcher, map aficionado, self-taught student of the Norwegian language — joined me on my inexplicable county counting odyssey. I did capture the remaining…
-
Finishing West Virginia, the Premise
Sometimes events don’t unfold as one might hope. This weekend I planned to capture six remaining West Virginia counties that I’d not visited before. I figured April would be a safe time of year with beautiful springtime weather and minimal traffic. That dream will need to be deferred for a little while longer. The route…
-
Any Excuse for a Road Trip, Part 2 (Short Haul)
Now I needed to execute my ambitious plan, a long weekend drive that would result in my capture of 24 previously unvisited counties. Friday, the first day, covered fewer miles than Saturday or Sunday. However, I made up for that shorter distance with plenty of sightseeing activities. I’d never traveled between St. Louis and Cape…
-
Focused on Counties
I’m planning for three, maybe four road trips of significant length coming up over the next several months. All of them will involve significant County Counting components. While I’ve put a big dent into my quest to visit every county in the United States, the total still represents considerably less than half of those available.…
-
Duckpins!
An interesting conversation took place on Twitter recently between two regular Twelve Mile Circle readers, @CTMQ and @oxwof. They linked me in at the tail-end of their friendly discussion about two unusual and quite rare variations of Ten-pin bowling: Duckpins and Candlepins. They’d answered most of their questions by the time I arrived on the…
-
That Recurring State Line
A random Twelve Mile Circle reader became an unwitting inspiration for this article simply because of where he or she lived. The little dot within Idaho on my Google Analytics dashboard mentioned State Line. That seemed too good to be true. I’ve done plenty of articles about border towns although I’d never noticed that one…
-
Centers of Michigan
For once I wasn’t looking for the geographic center of something, as problematic as that could be given various definitions. Not in Michigan. And for the record, the town of St. Louis claimed to be the “middle of the mitten.” Even so, this moves to a spot a few miles north-northwest of Cadillac taking the…