Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: Terrain

  • Misplaced Romans

    The Geographic Names Information System listed 94 populated places in the United States called Rome. I figured maybe some should exist in other nations that created a bunch of new places around that same time period. Alas, I didn’t find any such places in Canada, South Africa, Australia or New Zealand. Why Rome seemed so…

  • Directional West Virginia

    I spent the last several articles talking about West Virginia so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to add one more. The introductory post mentioned the oddly named West Virginia Northern Community College. Could I find places in West Virginia that represented each of the four cardinal directions? I guess I could have picked a different…

  • What the Dell?

    My annual long relaxing August weekend in Wisconsin came to an end. I can’t think of any place I’d rather pass the time for a few days than Wisconsin — in the summer. Many people who come to this part of the country end up in Wisconsin Dells. I never thought much about the definition…

  • Weird Place Names Kept Coming

    I found myself in familiar territory once again, with an overflowing backlog of article ideas. That signaled time for another round of house cleaning. In the past I’d featured weird place names that I’d encountered while I searched for other topics. Then I focused on More Weird Place Names and finally Even More Weird Place…

  • Michigan, Part 6 (Parting Shots)

    I wrote several articles about my Michigan trip and I still had a pile of ideas I hadn’t touched yet. They didn’t fall into common themes so I lumped all those leftover scraps together to finish the series. I hope everyone enjoyed — or at least tolerated — my ramblings from the latest journey. We’ll…

  • Michigan, Part 1 (County Adventures)

    I selected Michigan for our summer holiday this year. I won’t pretend that the drive was fun or easy although depriving greedy airlines of revenue certainly enhanced the appeal. Well, I’ve described my distaste for airlines before and I reveled in the many hundreds of dollars I denied them with this trip and several others…

  • Going in Circles

    For the obvious reason, any geographic feature related to circles will make it onto the pages of Twelve Mile Circle eventually. I collect examples as I encounter them until I have enough to write an entire article. So this is the latest batch. Circle, Montana Circle, Montana proclaimed itself to be “A Great Place to…

  • New England, Part 6 (Roundup)

    I came home sooner than I would have wanted, the journey over, a feeling that always seemed to settle upon me after a trek through hidden rural corners. I decompressed and began to process a trove of memories, sharing many of them with the Twelve Mile Circle audience. But some of those didn’t fit neatly…

  • New England, Part 2 (Of Course Geo-oddities)

    Of course I had to visit Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg. The Twelve Mile Circle audience loved geo-oddities and I needed to deliver. I’d been to New England several times and I’ve plumbed its depths for nuggets repeatedly. What was left? Well, this lake with a really long name for one. That wasn’t the only remarkable feature in…

  • New England, Part 1 (Give me a Sign)

    I returned recently from another one of my hurried trips, this one to the New England states. All of them. Plus New York for good measure. Those of you who followed Twelve Mile Circle’s Twitter account knew that already. The rest of the 12MC audience may not have noticed anything at all. I wrote a…