Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Twelve Mile Circle

  • Jalisco’s Ghostly Hand and Bony Fingers

    My efforts to update each one of hundreds of customized maps to the current version of Google Maps has been an ongoing chore. Not every aspect has been without benefit though. For instance it allowed me to ponder my complete index of places featured on Twelve Mile Circle in more detail than I’ve done in…

  • Extreme Reservations

    It started out as it often does through a chance encounter with a roadmap anomaly. I happened to be examining a stretch of highway online. Then I spied an uncharacteristically wide split between the westbound and eastbound lanes of Interstate 84 directly outside of Pendleton, Oregon. It seemed quite remarkable. A mountain ridge forced opposing…

  • Life is Hard

    Did anyone else notice the oddly-named park immediately to the east of Social Circle, Georgia when I posted The Chunk that Got Away in December? Well, I did. And I made a record of it intending to return later. Hard Labor Creek had to have a story. Places like that don’t get their names accidentally.…

  • Fill the Dust Bowl

    I posted an article last August about five marathons in five states in five days planned for March 2013. I didn’t intend to run, rather my goal was to convince my favorite runner to participate (in the half-marathon option). That would allow me to tag along to give moral support while pursuing various geo-oddity adventures.…

  • History Vegas Style

    Going out-of-town for the holidays to a small town where temperatures never cracked above freezing provided lots of contemplation time. It also offered abundant exercise opportunities for my right thumb via a television remote control. I’m an historian by training, so as one might expect I gravitate towards the History Channel and its ilk. Has…

  • Best Comments of 2012

    It is the last 12MC post of 2012 and a perfect time to wrap-up the year with a summary article. I decided to follow the example of Steve of Connecticut Museum Quest who featured his 2012 Top Comments. It seemed like an interesting twist, focusing on the audience rather than the articles. So in the…

  • Strange Canadian Bedfellows

    So I posted an article a few months ago called Strange Bedfellows. It explored country size comparisons included within the CIA World Factbook (e.g., “Botswana is about the size of Texas”). It was a great resource, I noted, for readers from the United States because landmasses were compared to US-based equivalents. Because the Central Intelligence…

  • Christmas Fluff

    Who reads 12MC on Christmas Day? Right. It’s just you and me today. Throw another log on the fire and don’t expect anything requiring research. This leaves me in a bit of a conundrum. I usually post an article on Tuesday. I suppose I could take the day off which would be a sane and…

  • Frank Sinatra’s Drive

    As Ol’ Blue Eyes — Francis Albert “Frank” Sinatra — so famously sang: If I can make it there I’ll make it anywhere It’s up to you Hoboken, Hoboken Say what?!? Frank Sinatra arrived in this world in Hoboken, New Jersey in 1915, not New York City, and he lived his first couple of decades…

  • Short Distance Namesakes

    Something has been bothering me since I mentioned the town of Washington, Virginia recently in Flip-Flopping. It claims title to the oldest town named for George Washington, platted by none other than George Washington himself in 1749. I noted that many call it Little Washington to differentiate it from nearby Washington, DC which dates to…

Latest Comments

  2. Hi Mr. Howder — Just going from memory, I recall that your “rule” for counting a nation/state/county is “if I’m…

  5. Does anyone have actual music to the song – Tanaha ,Timpson. Bobo and Blair ?? It was recorded by Tex…