Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Twelve Mile Circle

  • Mackinac’s Orbit, Part 2 (Counting Fingers)

    The purpose of the trip wasn’t county counting, it was visiting our older kid who worked on Mackinac Island for the summer. Even so, I still had a bunch of uncounted counties in that area so I planned to use that convenient occurrence to my advantage. That’s how a day that normally should involve a…

  • Mackinac’s Orbit, Part 1 (Up North)

    I had good reason to travel up to Mackinac Island in Michigan, a place sandwiched between its Upper and Lower Peninsulas. My older child worked at an internship there this summer, a requirement for a University degree. You know, the kid who loves zoos, designed a town, and noticed all those modes of transportation? Yes,…

  • Backroads Accomack

    I’d not spent much time in Accomack County, Virginia before. Well, one time a few years ago I did enjoy a long weekend in Chincoteague at the northern end of the county. I’ve also driven down busy U.S. Route 13 a few time on the way to other places. But the bicycle race “Le Tour…

  • Le Tour De Shore

    It seemed like a good idea last January when a friend mentioned Le Tour De Shore to me. He wanted to try a long distance bicycle ride and what better place to try that a place almost completely devoid of hills? There’s almost nothing but flat out on the Delmarva Peninsula. So he convinced me…

  • Indiana Toll Road Time Zone Crossing

    So you’re sitting somewhere outside of Chicago, Illinois cruising along the Indiana Toll Road. Most people know that Chicago and all of its nearby Indiana suburbs follow Central Time. On the other hand, much of the rest of Indiana follows Eastern Time. You just want to know when to change your watch, right? Let’s cut…

  • Southern Hills, Day 6 (Georgia Smokies)

    The races we ran on successive mornings were now a distant memory. On this final full day we slept-in and focused on a full slate of roadside amusements instead. We only had to make it to Atlanta to catch our flight the following morning. This time we concentrated on the Georgia side of the tripoint…

  • Southern Hills, Day 5 (Summits)

    The final race in the series ended but the vacation kept going strong. We still had a couple of days reserved for some special places and additional exploration within the Appalachians. Much of this concentrated on an area I hadn’t explored before, a rugged place where three states joined. Day 5 focused on one portion…

  • Southern Hills, Day 4 (Serendipity)

    We were well into the journey by the time we arrived at the second race in Macon, Georgia. Afterwards we drove nearly due-north until we crossed the South Carolina border. By-and-large the route avoided Interstate Highways except for a tiny stretch of I-85 near the end. We passed through rural backcountry and small town America…

  • Southern Hills, Day 3 (Unfinished Business)

    The third day brought us to our primary purpose, the start of the race series. So even though we’d already done a lot on the trip so far we still had a bunch of unfinished business ahead of us. We also had another purpose, or at least I did. The “we” part of this equation…

  • Southern Hills, Day 2 (Roadside Attractions)

    We built a buffer into our schedule. That way, we figured, if plans went awry we’d still have an extra day to get down to the first race. As it happened everything unfolded beautifully on Day 2 so it was all about seeing as many roadside attractions as we could squeeze into daylight hours. An…

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…