Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Tag: NASA

  • Southern Heat, Part 6 (Houston)

    The heat really cranked up as we entered Texas, never dropping below a daily high of 100° Fahrenheit (38° Celsius). Here my hybrid working vacation transitioned completely to pure work for a day. That’s where I needed to attend meetings at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston (map). This happened to fall along our intended…

  • ATK Rocket Park

    Near Promontory Summit, Utah, USA (July 2011) A surprise awaits visitors to the desert on the north side of the Great Salt Lake. Most people probably know about the Golden Spike National Historic Site — in fact that’s probably why most people are way out there in the middle of nowhere. Lesser know, but still…

  • John C. Stennis Space Center

    Hancock County, Mississippi, USA (March 2007) [EDITOR’S NOTE: This page will remain active for historical purposes although please be advised that the visitor center, tours and levels of security have changed considerably since this 2007 visit. See the pages written after our 2015 and 2019 visits for more recent summaries. Also, please contact the INFINITY…

  • Aircraft Carrier, Part 8 (Other Spaces and Places)

    I certainly enjoyed my all-too-brief time on the USS John C. Stennis and hopefully I can get another opportunity to do it again someday.  However, all things must end so I’ll tie-up a few remaining threads so we can move on to further adventures. Museum A museum on an aircraft carrier?  Sure, why not.  Behind…

  • Gulf Coast Weekend

    The college tours continued again last weekend although I didn’t go.  My wife and our older son headed towards sites in Ohio and Pennsylvania. The younger guy and I flew down to the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Mississippi to visit with family instead. He didn’t get to go on the great road trip over the holidays…

  • Tendril of Fairmont

    Last October I took a trip through various parts of northern West Virginia to count some counties. This included a stopover in Morgantown, home of the state’s flagship West Virginia University. I bypassed this area a number of times previously so I enjoyed being able to stop there for once. Research at the time brought…

  • Southern Swing, Part 2

    The second part of my quick southern trip moved west. We began in St. Augustine, Florida a couple of days earlier and now it was time to move on to family on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. This transformed into an exercise in county counting. My completion map of Florida counties changed dramatically for the better…

  • Chincoteague and Assateague

    The dirty little secret of the geo-oddities blogger community is that there’s only so much geographic weirdness to go around. We all tend to overlap with our material from time-to-time, and that’s fine. We each apply our own spin on a common set facts to develop something original and creative. I’d been trying to think…

  • Space Shuttle Discovery Flyover

    We had a moment of excitement this morning when the Space Shuttle “Discovery” set atop a modified 747 jet airline flew right past my office window. Please excuse the low-quality photograph. I had only the camera on my mobile phone at the time and this was the best I could manage. Seeing it live with…

  • Shirts Around the World

    This odd geography fixation of mine is nothing new. It’s been pretty much a lifelong commitment. I was leafing through a photo shoebox a few days ago and I stumbled across a faded envelope that I hadn’t given much thought to in several years. It contained an interesting collection of photos from the early 1990’s…