Twelve Mile Circle
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Aircraft Carrier, Part 5 (Living Aboard)
The USS John C. Stennis felt like an otherworldly city, with some things strange and others more familiar. For example, the Internet did not exist there, at least not for us, and neither did mobile phones. Scarce satellite bandwidth had to be doled out. Sailors could check email every once in awhile; short-term visitors such…
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Aircraft Carrier, Part 4 (The Island)
From the surface of the flight deck, one feature stood literally above all the rest. A superstructure rose several stories into the sky, with a commanding view of everything happening on and around the ship. The Navy called this feature the “Island.” Funny, I kind-of thought of the whole aircraft carrier as an island, completely…
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Aircraft Carrier, Part 3 (Air Power)
The USS John C. Stennis and the thousands of sailors that comprise its crew exist to keep military jets in the air far from home. They do this extraordinarily well. We got to watch aircraft from a variety of vantage points, feeling their immense power as much as hearing and seeing them. I’ve never served…
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Aircraft Carrier, Part 2 (All Aboard)
The message I’d been waiting for finally arrived so I scrambled over to the Naval Station Norfolk Tour and Information Center on the public side of Gate 5 (map). I met the rest of the people invited to this excursion and we climbed into a 15-passenger van. Guards waved us through and we drove onto…
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A Big Milestone – 1500!
My travels this summer fell into a distinct pattern as I completed recent Twelve Mile Circle articles. I didn’t even plan to mention the most recent long weekend excursion until I crossed an important milestone somewhat unexpectedly. This marked our annual visit to Madison, Wisconsin for the Great Taste of the Midwest beer festival, our tenth straight…
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Gulf Coast Weekend
The college tours continued again last weekend although I didn’t go. My wife and our older son headed towards sites in Ohio and Pennsylvania. The younger guy and I flew down to the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Mississippi to visit with family instead. He didn’t get to go on the great road trip over the holidays…
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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…
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Ithaca, Part 1 (Four Busy Days)
We can drive from our home outside of Washington, DC to Ithaca, New York surprisingly easily. All it takes is about six hours in the car over some pretty scenic roads. I’ve loved New York’s Finger Lake Region for many years, one of the few places I’ve ever returned to for repeated vacations. We didn’t…
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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…
Latest Comments
I think that range needs to be expanded greatly. I’m in the Oklahoma City area and those are fairly prevalent…
The law in the 1800s when most of the countries was being broke down into smaller one stated that you…
I think you might be referring to a post from January 2010 called “What Counts as a Visit.” My first…
Hi Mr. Howder — Just going from memory, I recall that your “rule” for counting a nation/state/county is “if I’m…
That was its original range before people spread it all around. Now it’s in lots of different places, including Oklahoma.