Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Category: Water

  • Aircraft Carrier, Part 1 (Getting to Norfolk)

    I’d been on-and-off the road repeatedly for weeks, taking one brief trip after another for the entire summer.  The latest stretch brought me to six different places over twelve days.  I just wanted to get home and sleep in my own bed for awhile. That lasted barely three nights.  Then I headed right back out…

  • Ithaca, Part 2 (Waterfalls)

    Some sources claimed the presence of “over 150 waterfalls within 10 miles” of Ithaca, New York.  I guess it depends on how they’re defined.  Even so, waterfalls seemed to pop into view just about anywhere we looked.  As numerous T-shirts and bumper stickers around town reminded us, “Ithaca is Gorges.” We squeezed a lot of…

  • Jersey Shore, Part 7 (Leftovers)

    The Jersey Shore trip came to an end all too soon. I still had a few things to talk about, though. Some topics didn’t fit neatly into the earlier categories so I lumped them all together in this final article. After that, Twelve Mile Circle will hibernate once more until I find something else to…

  • Jersey Shore, Part 3 (Lighthouses)

    I enjoy visiting lighthouses . They’re also one of those things I like to count and track. Of course I researched the most promising locations long before I ever got to the New Jersey coastline. This shore seemed particularly attractive so I sifted through a bunch of options and planned my strategy. I found several possibilities although I…

  • Jersey Shore, Part 2 (Boardwalks)

    What should people do when they visit the Jersey Shore?  Hit some of the many well-known boardwalks of course.  I doubt any other stretch of Atlantic coastline in the United States has a greater density of boardwalks than New Jersey.  We traveled the length of the state’s waterfront, heading north to south, from Sandy Hook…

  • Cross-Country, Part 7 (A Week in Phoenix)

    We drove for five long days and finally arrived in Arizona.  However, the adventure did not end there. Phoenix had always been the ultimate goal.  Our decision to go on a road trip sprang from that choice.  My wife and younger son wanted no part of the drive and flew to Phoenix instead.  There they…

  • Australasian Adventures, Part 11 (Lists)

    We’re getting close to the end with this penultimate article in the Australasian series. Thank you for bearing with me. I thought I would shift my focus and provide an update on various lists that I maintain. I’m known to be a bit obsessive-compulsive and I tally visits to places or objects that I consider…

  • Australasian Adventures, Part 7 (Wild Animal Encounters)

    Certainly the wildlife we experienced differed from what we’d typically seen before. Australia and New Zealand, so far removed from the rest of the world for so long, featured all sorts of famously unique creatures. I don’t need to elaborate. We’re all familiar with them. I simply enjoyed the opportunity to experience them in their…

  • Australasian Adventures, Part 6 (The Hunter Region)

    I dropped a hint in one of the earlier articles that our plans went awry only once. That happened in Australia. Upon landing in Sydney, we headed immediately about three hours north by automobile along the coast into the Hunter Region. The Hunter Valley formed the most well-known portion of the region, acclaimed for its…

  • Australasian Adventures, Part 2 (On the Waterfront)

    We rarely ventured more than a few kilometres from water. New Zealand made that pretty easy, being composed of islands after all. We also stuck to a rather narrow band of eastern Australia beginning with Sydney and driving north along the coast for about three hours. Almost every scenic vista we found included a body…