Twelve Mile Circle

  • My Travel Box

    It struck me that I’d gone really north and really west when I went to Alaska, perhaps the farthest I’d ever been in either direction. That made me wonder about the most extreme latitudes (north/south) and longitudes (east/west) I’d visited during my lifetime. I was wrong on both counts by the way; Alaska was neither…

  • The Swap

    An obscure page on the U.S. Census Bureau website, Substantial Changes to Counties and County Equivalent Entities: 1970-Present may not hold much interest to the general public. Even so it’s a site that I’ve bookmarked and visit once in awhile. It’s an ongoing catalog of boundary changes that involve at least 200 people or areas…

  • A New Look

    Those of you arriving on the Twelve Mile Circle probably noticed a new look today. It’s the first redesign since I started the blog in November 2007. A “theme” governs the visible aspects of a blog in the parlance of WordPress, the underlying application, and I’ve simply swapped one theme for another. I liked the…

  • More First-Timers

    Every once in a great while, whenever I get a little curious and begin to wonder, I go back through my older web logs and see if I’ve recorded any more first-time international visitors. This is becoming an increasingly unusual discovery. I’ve been running Google Analytics for two-and-a-half years. Almost all sovereign nations of any…

  • Gaithersburg Doughnut Hole

    I’ve noted my appreciation for reader comments, suggestions and input on many occasions. The quality of what people contribute is nothing short of miraculous. Sometimes an example lodges in my brain to the exclusion of all the rest. That’s what happened with the Gaithersburg Doughnut Hole and I don’t know why. It’s not any more…

  • What Coast are They Guarding, Exactly?

    Obituaries for the late Senator Robert Byrd remarked upon many things. These included his uncanny ability to deliver vast piles of Federal dollars to his home state of West Virginia. One can debate whether that’s a positive attribute or a negative, but either way it is hard to dispute that Sen. Byrd excelled at this…

  • Kenai Adventure, Part 4

    The visit to the Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula is winding down. Unfortunately I will be making my way back home over the next couple of days. Those of you who follow Twelve Mile Circle for its odd geography can rejoice. I’ll return to a regular schedule of useless trivia that only we enjoy. Well, unless something…

  • Kenai Adventure, Part 3 – Wildlife

    Most people probably drive down to Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula for the scenery and the wildlife, and that’s also true for me. Sure, I enjoyed poking around some of the more unusual aspects of Kenai geography but that doesn’t mean I haven’t taken advantage of opportunities to marvel at the natural beauty that attracts every other…

  • Kenai Adventure, Part 2

    Whittier is a scenic town of perhaps two hundred people on the western side of Alaska’s Prince William Sound. There are dozens of picturesque villages dotting the coastline of the Kenai Peninsula so that’s not why I stopped here on a cold, rainy morning in July. No, I wanted to experience its rich concentration of…

  • Kenai Adventure, Part 1

    I resolved my Internet dilemma. A park set aside for recreational vehicles sits just downhill from us although out of our line of site. Apparently there’s a company that specializes in providing Internet access to RV parks, allowing visitors to rent by the day, week or month. I’m close enough to tap into that so…


Latest Comments

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

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