Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Twelve Mile Circle

  • Australasian Adventures, Part 8 (Captive Animal Encounters)

    The previous article discussed our several encounters with wild animals in their native habitats. However, we saw even more in captivity. My older son collects zoos like I collect breweries. He makes sure that he saves a map from each one as a souvenir too (wonder where he inherited that quirk from?). No matter where…

  • Australasian Adventures, Part 7 (Wild Animal Encounters)

    Certainly the wildlife we experienced differed from what we’d typically seen before. Australia and New Zealand, so far removed from the rest of the world for so long, featured all sorts of famously unique creatures. I don’t need to elaborate. We’re all familiar with them. I simply enjoyed the opportunity to experience them in their…

  • Australasian Adventures, Part 6 (The Hunter Region)

    I dropped a hint in one of the earlier articles that our plans went awry only once. That happened in Australia. Upon landing in Sydney, we headed immediately about three hours north by automobile along the coast into the Hunter Region. The Hunter Valley formed the most well-known portion of the region, acclaimed for its…

  • Australasian Adventures, Part 5 (Heading Inland)

    As mentioned earlier, we didn’t spend much time away from the coastline during our adventures except for a couple of days on New Zealand’s North Island. I already wrote about the geothermal sites. We saw several additional noteworthy sites during our inland jaunt as well. Hobbiton My older son watched the entire Lord of the…

  • Australasian Adventures, Part 4 (Geothermal)

    New Zealand anchored the southwestern end of the Ring of Fire, a long strand of seismic and volcanic activity on the outer edges of the Pacific Ocean. Here the earth’s tectonic plates collided, with results particularly apparent on the nation’s North Island. No active volcanoes currently threatened although cracks and fissures hissed angrily in numerous…

  • Australasian Adventures, Part 3 (Vistas)

    I’ve always liked climbing to the heights, whether by foot, automobile or elevator. Fortunately the parts of New Zealand and Australia we visited included many such opportunities. Some were man-made while others appeared as natural features on the magnificent terrain. Most days brought plenty of chances to appreciate the scenery in all kinds of different…

  • Australasian Adventures, Part 2 (On the Waterfront)

    We rarely ventured more than a few kilometres from water. New Zealand made that pretty easy, being composed of islands after all. We also stuck to a rather narrow band of eastern Australia beginning with Sydney and driving north along the coast for about three hours. Almost every scenic vista we found included a body…

  • Australasian Adventures, Part 1 (Preparations and Arrival)

    Finally, after months of anticipation and planning, the time came for our trip to Australasia. I took suggestions from the Twelve Mile Circle audience and tried to incorporate them wherever I could. We ended up spending a week in New Zealand and a week in Australia. Those who follow the 12MC Twitter account already know…

  • Auckland Origins

    I wondered about the weirdest things while I planned my most recent trip. For instance, how did the largest city in New Zealand get its name? And why would anyone need to know that ahead of time? A thousand different details I needed to nail down and somehow that one insignificant notion became a concern.…

  • Rockies Loop, Part 6 (Breweries)

    I’ll wrap up the Rockies Loop adventure with one final article that probably won’t interest the majority of Twelve Mile Circle readers. Please feel free to skip this one if you like. I won’t mind. Then we’ll start with a new topic next week. Breweries and brewpubs grew in abundance in this area and of…

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…