Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Twelve Mile Circle

  • Jersey Shore, Part 6 (A Little History)

    It seemed like we spent an inordinate amount of time chasing lighthouses, boardwalks, and breweries although we found other things too.  I’ve always been fascinated by historical sites and I scoured the area for targets.  A lot of notable events happened in the northeastern United States.  The Europeans arrived there early so I suspected the…

  • Jersey Shore, Part 5 (Positive Signs)

    I have a thing for signs and I noticed that the Jersey Shore had plenty of interesting things to tell us.  They displayed a tale of my week-long visit down the coastline in words and pictures.  I didn’t intend to search for signs, nor did I have any particular plan to remember them.  They appeared…

  • Jersey Shore, Part 4 (Brewery Renaissance)

    New Jersey had some peculiarities.  People can’t pump their own gasoline, for instance.  It’s like the 1960’s, with station attendants and the whole deal.  The local roads also had this weird thing where drivers had to exit right to turn left.  I don’t mean like on the Interstate highways with formal ramps and overpasses where…

  • Jersey Shore, Part 3 (Lighthouses)

    I enjoy visiting lighthouses . They’re also one of those things I like to count and track. Of course I researched the most promising locations long before I ever got to the New Jersey coastline. This shore seemed particularly attractive so I sifted through a bunch of options and planned my strategy. I found several possibilities although I…

  • Jersey Shore, Part 2 (Boardwalks)

    What should people do when they visit the Jersey Shore?  Hit some of the many well-known boardwalks of course.  I doubt any other stretch of Atlantic coastline in the United States has a greater density of boardwalks than New Jersey.  We traveled the length of the state’s waterfront, heading north to south, from Sandy Hook…

  • Jersey Shore, Part 1 (Huh?)

    My wife and I took a little road trip over the Spring Break week immediately proceeding Easter.  We sent the kids away to stay with their grandparents.  Unencumbered, we found a rare opportunity to choose pretty much any destination in the world we wanted to explore.  Friends seemed perplexed by our ultimate decision though.  We…

  • Cross-Country, Part 8 (Bonus!)

    Finally the end. Or was it? We’d driven most of the way across the United States. Then we spent a full week in Phoenix, Arizona. However, we weren’t completely done. Our rental home agreement ended two days before our return flight so we needed to spend a little time somewhere else. Originally my wife figured we could go down to…

  • Cross-Country, Part 7 (A Week in Phoenix)

    We drove for five long days and finally arrived in Arizona.  However, the adventure did not end there. Phoenix had always been the ultimate goal.  Our decision to go on a road trip sprang from that choice.  My wife and younger son wanted no part of the drive and flew to Phoenix instead.  There they…

  • Cross-Country, Part 6 (The Western Half)

    The first half of the drive seemed almost routine as it ran through terrain familiar to a lifelong resident of the eastern part of the United States. However we still had a couple of days to go and we began moving into unfamiliar territory. Here I captured a wide swath of previously unvisited counties straight through the…

  • Cross-Country, Part 5 (The Eastern Half)

    We actually did a lot more than collect new counties and visit zoos.  After all, we sat in a car for five days!  I needed to stop every couple of hours to stretch my legs.  Sometimes we timed our layovers to see something interesting and sometimes things had a way of finding us.  The open…

Latest Comments

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

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

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

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