Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Twelve Mile Circle

  • Now Malawi

    I’ve had a good month attracting new visitors from Africa. I’d pretty much stagnated with that audience lately so that’s a noteworthy accomplishment. I’ve tracked statistics for nearly two years and kept a close watch. Unfortunately I haven’t had as much success as I’ve wanted. I even lamented my poor record with African visitors in…

  • Virginia Smoking Ban

    A smoking ban in Virginia restaurants will begin in a few days, on December 1, 2009. Virginia does not allow standalone bars — an establishment must attribute a significant percentage of sales to food in order to maintain a liquor license — so the ban extends broadly and deeply across the state. It includes several…

  • This Tour Made Possible by… You

    I sent out an appeal for sights I could cram into a single afternoon in San Francisco. Of course, the readership of Twelve Mile Circle came through with flying colors. I wrapped up the business that had occupied me for most of the week and set out on my journey to absorb as much of…

  • Make my Trip

    Twelve Mile Circle traveled to San Francisco, California this week. I don’t have much time to enjoy many of the sites, thought. Unfortunately the sun sets early this time of year. That gives me maybe a half-hour each afternoon after a full day stuck in an office building. My touring record isn’t very good on…

  • Geocachers Find Trinkets and Trouble

    I know there are a number of geocachers who read the Twelve Mile Circle on a regular basis, so here is a link for members of that community who may not have seen this yet. It appeared in the print edition of Washington Post this morning, and I see it is now available online: Geocachers…

  • Counting Border Crossings

    I’m a relentless counter. I count lighthouse, ferries, waterfalls, breweries and even nineteenth century coastal fortifications during my travels. I used to count states but it became pointless when I reached all fifty so I switched to counties. Last summer I hit my 1,000th county and I’ve continued onward from there. If it’s possible to…

  • Wandering through Real Estate

    [EDITOR’S NOTE: 12MC ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED THIS ARTICLE IN 2009. THIS FEATURE NO LONGER EXISTS IN GOOGLE MAPS] There’s been a capability in Google Maps that allows users to check real estate prices for quite awhile now. However a couple of weeks ago they added this feature to the “more” button on the top right of…

  • Weird Ohio Explorations

    A number of regular Twelve Mile Circle readers track to IP addresses in Ohio. With that in mind I thought I’d throw something special their way, a Google Maps compilation that I recently stumbled across called “Weird Ohio Explorations.” I’ve had some fun poking around the waypoints the developer included on the map. You probably…

  • No more rest?

    I wanted this to be a lighthearted post. As I poked around the online maps as I frequently do, I found a rest area along Interstate 80 in western Utah. There I found one of the most remote, desolate places I’ve ever seen. Just take a look around (map). Barely a speck of shade exists…

  • A Mali Visitor

    A couple of weeks ago I bemoaned that I hadn’t had any visitors from much of Africa. So it was with great joy that I opened my Google Analytics account this morning and found that I’d recorded a visitor from Mali, my first from that west African nation. The red dot on the graphic corresponds…

Latest Comments

  1. Osage Orange trees are fairly common in Northern Delaware. I assumed they were native plants. As kids we definitely called…

  2. Enough of them in Northern Delaware that they don’t stand out at all until the fruit drops in the fall.…

  3. That was its original range before people spread it all around. Now it’s in lots of different places, including Oklahoma.

  4. I think that range needs to be expanded greatly. I’m in the Oklahoma City area and those are fairly prevalent…

  5. The law in the 1800s when most of the countries was being broke down into smaller one stated that you…