Tag: Highpoint
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Western North Carolina, Part 2 (Blue Ridge Parkway Loop)
I’m going to take a little bit of a departure from the usual Twelve Mile Circle travelogue format. I’ll actually suggest a couple of simple one-day itineraries. They mirror actual trips starting from our home base for the week in Asheville, North Carolina. Readers should feel free to customize them at their discretion. Admittedly, they…
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Reader Mailbag 3
Twelve Mile Circle finds itself with an overflowing mailbag once again with lots of intriguing readers suggestions. Each one of these could probably form an entire article. However, I’ll provide the short versions today to try to clear the backlog. Once again, I’ll say gladly that 12MC has the best readers. I really appreciate learning…
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Highpoint to Lowpoint Revisited
The recent Highpoint to Lowpoint article generated more interest than I expected. I wanted to go into more detail when I wrote it but it got unwieldy. Unfortunately I didn’t get an opportunity due to various time constraints back then. The details would have required a lot of manual effort and I didn’t really want…
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Highpoint to Lowpoint
Twelve Mile Circle received an intriguing question from reader “Cary” a few days ago. Cary, a professional mapmaker, noticed something interesting while conducting research: the amazing proximity of Minnesota’s highest point of elevation to its lowest. This led to a natural question. Was this the shortest distance between a state highpoint and a lowpoint? I’d…
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U.S. States’ Lowest County Highpoints
The setup might take a little explanation. I wanted to find the lowest county highpoint in each of the fifty United States. There would only be one per state based upon a series of lists provided by Peakbagger.com. That might lead to speculation that a better solution would involve examining all county highpoints regardless of…
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Confluence of Confluences
I began to consider confluences while pondering the Confluence Brewing Company during my recent Geo-BREWities exercise. Maybe I should credit Google Map’s auto-completion function for the suggestion after I typed the brewery name into an address bar. It noted that at least one town of Confluence existed. A quick check of the Geographic Names Information…
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Capital Highpoints
I once climbed to the top of the not-too-impressive highpoint of the District of Columbia. It’s even subway accessible, and you know I’m all about easy highpointing. The District highpoint is kind-of equivalent to a state highpoint — some lists include it and others do not — and that was a convenient loophole to add…
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Dust Bowl Adventure, Part 3 (Geo-Oddities Overflowing)
I completed an epic day of geo-oddity exploration earlier this week during the Dust Bowl trip. An Initial Cluster The first cluster sat near Black Mesa at the far northwestern corner of the Oklahoma panhandle. This small area may be unique in the state from a geographical perspective, with genuine mesas replacing more typical flat…
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Highpoints of the Crown Dependencies
How does one refer to the Bailiwicks of Guernsey and Jersey, and the Isle of Man collectively? I pondered the British Isles Euler diagram and didn’t see a specific designation. “Outlying British Islands” seemed like a possibility although I didn’t want to diminish their significance. I think “Crown Dependencies” covers the three, and only those…
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Connecticut Extremes: Humidity and Humility
The Extreme Connecticut Geo-Tour began a day early for me with a seven-hour drive from the Washington, DC area to a hotel in Avon, CT that I used as my home base. I timed the drive well, managing to avoid various rush hours along a nefarious traffic corridor. Then I shot an email to Steve…