Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Tag: Alabama

  • 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…

  • Southern Hills, Day 1 (Positioning)

    I returned to more familiar travel patterns during the current and hopefully permanent lull in the COVID-19 pandemic. This included my first airline flight since February 2020 when I returned from Bermuda. Then the world shut down and I endured the longest period of my life without an airline flight since I was fourteen years…

  • Counties in Alabama that I have Visited

    There are 67 Counties in Alabama – “The Heart of Dixie“ Also be sure to see my United States County Counting Page for the rest of the states. I have visited 27 Counties = 40.3% of Counties in Alabama Counties visited are colored-in; counties still needing to be visited are blank.  Map created using Mob…

  • Time Zone Dams

    Time continued to play on my mind. This time it came courtesy of a random search engine query that landed on 12MC for some unknown reason. However, the notion implied by this wayward message intrigued me much more than the average query. I’ve focused on structures split by borders before although this one had an…

  • Pre-Nazi Swastika Architectural Details

    I traveled into the Twelve Mile Circle — the Delaware geo-oddity that inspired the name for this site — while visiting with some dear friends last weekend. In Wilmington, at Rodney Square specifically, I happened to glance up. There I noticed the wonderful Egyptian Revival architectural details on the Wilmington Public Library. My earlier Egyptian…

  • Town of County Line

    I’m always on the lookout for odd town names. So that’s what drew my eye to a dot, the aptly named County Line, Alabama. I wish I could make a better map, however Google seems to be stripping features away from “old” Maps, and the newer version is even worse. I can’t do simple things…

  • Drive Me Crazy

    Previous 12MC articles delved into creative and sometimes bizarre pairings of street names with suffixes. Those were explored in posts such as Order in the Court, He Went Thata Way and No Way! Way!. Enough with the Courts and Ways (curds and whey?). It’s time to drive. Line Drive Readers from international areas devoid of…

  • Three Notches

    Marks on trees served as road signs during North America’s colonial times, a period when much of the population was illiterate. Certain patterns of slashes or notches conveyed specific information about the nature of a pike or landmarks a traveler might find farther down down its path. Three notches served as a frequent glyph although…

  • Chicken Scratch

    Chicken scratch serves as an informal term for illegible handwriting. It is also a type of chicken feed that’s typically strewn upon the ground. Chickens then scratch around the dirt in pursuit of feed, leaving claw marks behind. I suppose illegible handwriting might be thought to resemble the results of hungry chickens foraging for cracked…