Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Twelve Mile Circle

  • Spooky

    A lot of tangential articles began to appear on social media recently, tying-in with the hype around the latest film adaption of Stephen King’s “It.” One article I noticed included a list of his major works, from the early days of his writing career to the present. It included “The Shining,” and rightly so; a…

  • Smallest Country on Two Oceans

    While I researched the Smallest Multiple Time Zone Countries I noticed that a small corner of Chile actually abutted the Atlantic Ocean. Thousands of kilometres of its coastline hugged the Pacific Ocean and that one tiny little corner curved and extended far enough to reach the Atlantic. I enjoyed that meaningless anomaly for some unknown…

  • Smallest Multiple Time Zone Countries

    Sometimes I come up with a simple question and I think I’ll get, and even want, a simple answer. Writing these Twelve Mile Circle articles is a lot easier when I’m able to come to a conclusion quickly. Then I can move on with my weekend. Other times the story gets a lot more complicated,…

  • C&O: Carderock to Georgetown

    I ride my bike most weekends and I like to switch-up the route whenever possible. Sometimes I complete a circuit. Other times I’ll go for an out-and-back. When I do that I enjoy playing a little game I call “how far can I get in an hour.” We’re blessed with an abundance of well-maintained, scenic…

  • Cavalier

    This article came courtesy of the infamous Unknown Random Reader who landed on the pages of Twelve Mile Circle from an interesting place. This time the town carried the name of Cavalier. I’ll get to that later. I wanted to start with a little context about why that resonated with me. Hearing the word Cavalier…

  • Totally Eclipsed

    Can anyone stand one more eclipse story? I promise this one will be a little different than most. I drove a thousand miles for a 4-day weekend and, well… Mother Nature had different plans. Lots of loyal Twelve Mile Circle readers asked me if I planned to see the August 21, 2017, total eclipse of…

  • Four Corners, Part 6 (Reflections)

    I decided to have a little fun in the final article of the Four Corners series. A couple of my earlier posts mentioned a trip through the same general area many years ago. It served as a short leg of my longest road trip ever, eventually covering 8,000 miles (12,900 kilometres) in 28 days during…

  • Four Corners, Part 5 (Breweries)

    Every longtime reader in the Twelve Mile Circle audience already knew that this article was going to happen. Here comes the one about my latest brewery adventure. As always, I’ll try to put a bit of a geo-geek spin on it. I won’t talk about any actual beers because that wouldn’t meet the stated purpose…

  • Four Corners, Part 4 (Native Americans)

    It would be difficult for anyone to travel through northern New Mexico and southern Colorado without encountering signs of its original inhabitants. Archaeological evidence stretched back for millennia. Ruins defined an era of large, complex settlements beginning more than a thousand years ago. Their descendants still live in the area, preserving a rich tradition and…

  • Four Corners, Part 3 (Towns)

    While the great outdoors flavored many of our decisions across northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, we also spent some time in “civilization” too. I tied to stay at least two nights in each place to create a little mental anchor. Otherwise we’d feel adrift in a vagabond existence. That offered time to explore a…

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…