Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Twelve Mile Circle

  • 1,000!

    Why is this man standing here foolishly next to an otherwise nondescript road sign, waist-high in weeds by a railroad track? What is so special about Crawford County, Wisconsin? Well, nothing much, although I’m sure its residents would say otherwise. Actually this was a very special location for me. It represented the 1,000th county in…

  • Wisconsin’s Great River Road, Day 2

    Day 2 along Wisconsin’s portion of the Great River Road began in La Crosse. We kept the same leisurely pace as the previous day. Later in the day we strayed from a purely Wisconsin route just to liven things up a bit. We crossed the Mississippi River into Iowa using the Cassville Ferry traverse. From…

  • Wisconsin’s Great River Road, Day 1

    My recent discussion of the Great River Road was a bit of a setup. We took a short journey along Wisconsin’s portion of the road, and into Iowa over the weekend. The scenery along the bluffs of the Mississippi River could only be described as spectacular; soaring cliffs towering over the ever-changing nature of the…

  • The Great River Road

    The Great River Road is a bit of a misnomer for it isn’t a single road. Rather many different roads commingle along a common theme, tracing a route along the Mississippi River. This scenic designation runs contiguously through ten of the United States. By extension it also enters two Canadian Provinces, a total length of…

  • Mountaineering by Subway

    Let’s climb to the summit of a significant highpoint. This video approaches and then transitions to a panoramic view from the summit of the highest point of elevation in the District of Columbia. But that’s getting a little ahead of the story. Let me explain how I found myself here recently. Here is “Point Reno”…

  • The Triple Frontier

    Twelve Mile Circle reader “jlumsden” returned from vacation in South America recently and sent a couple of photographs. He visited an area called the Triple Frontier, or La Triple Frontera in Spanish or Tríplice Fronteira in Portuguese. It’s the place where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay come together at a common spot, an international tripoint. So…

  • England’s Desert

    England has a desert? When I think desert, I normally envision cacti, sand, camels and that sort of thing, but that’s an inaccurate and stereotypical point of view. A desert doesn’t require scorching heat. Antarctica qualifies as a desert. Some sources even claim that even England has a desert. It is located at Dungeness, a…

  • Smallest of Hawaii

    I’ve been getting a fair amount of hits with search terms like “smallest island in Hawaii” and “smallest population in Hawaii.” This probably means a new geo-trivia contest recently started or a homework assignment for a standardized curriculum just came due. The answer is more interesting than I imagined, and once again it comes down…

  • Brief Stop in San Antonio

    Business brought me to San Antonio, Texas this week. Even so, I still had a few moments to poke around the usual tourist spots. My luggage wanted to visit a little longer so it took a free vacation courtesy of American Airlines. Hopefully we’ll be reunited this weekend. Remember the Alamo I first stopped at…

  • Greatest Time Zone Jump

    People seem more interested in time zone anomalies than many other quirks I discuss. I know this because I get lots of random one-time visitors to the Twelve Mile Circle via search engines. Invariably they are searching these kinds of queries. I like them too, but I try not to overwhelm my regular readership with…

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…