Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Tag: Ontario

  • Flat as a Pancake

    The expression “Flat as a Pancake” obviously means something considered extremely flat. There are several U.S. states, led by Florida, that are indeed even flatter than a pancake. That’s not what this article is about. Rather I found a location that may or may not have been flatter than a pancake. Nonetheless it should be…

  • Make Tracks to Midland

    So I had to admit it. My odd fascination with Every County’s slow-motion serial recitation of literally every county progressed towards an obsession. I couldn’t stop checking the author’s crawling pace once every few days. Then he arrived vicariously at Midland County, Michigan about a week ago where he noted that it “got its name…

  • Sault

    Twelve Mile Circle mentioned Sault Ste. Marie the other day, the name of two cities on opposite banks of the St. Marys River, one in Canada and the other in the United States. The curious prefix “sault” jumped-out of course, and while I was aware that it should be pronounced something akin to “soo” I’d…

  • Saint Marys River

    I’ve certainly noticed Florida’s northeastern bump above Jacksonville, and then the Georgia dip just to the west, both of which contrast with their generally straight remaining border. Sure, we’ve all seen it before and taken note of it. The meandering border through that segment follows the St. Marys River that rises from the depths of…

  • Kiloanomaly

    What does one call a thousand geo-oddities? Ultimately I decided to use the metric prefix “Kilo,” although kilogeooddity and kilooddity both looked clunky with all of those extra vowels. Ultimately I coined the phrase kiloanomaly, equating to units of a thousand objects combining to form singular anomalies. It almost sounded like a Hawaiian word. I…

  • Odds and Ends 11

    The day I dreaded finally arrived. I was defaulted to the new version of Google Maps yesterday. I wasn’t favorably impressed when I first reviewed it last May. Also, I always understood that the version I’ve used since the creation of Twelve Mile Circle would go away eventually. Sooner-or-later I was going to have to…

  • Land of Disco

    I came across an unusual neighborhood in Raleigh, North Carolina where many of the streets were named for different genres of dance. Why yes, it was a mobile home park. How did you guess? It further confirmed my theory that trailer parks have the best street names. They use labels that everyone would love to…

  • Just as Enigmatic

    Why? Because. Why Not? I dunno. It’s a puzzle. It’s a riddle. I unearthed an Enigma and I discovered a Paradox. Then I decided to have a little fun with a few more place names along a similar vein. Many of them defied explanation and remained enigmatic. They can still be enjoyed simply for their…

  • Municipally Owned Telephone

    Many municipalities have considered or have already started to provide broadband services to their residents directly. They intentionally bypass numerous commercial enterprises that specialize in those functions. There were more than 100 cities doing that already just in the United States alone in 2011. Control over speed and pricing offered one big reason. A desire…

  • Keep it Moving

    Twelve Mile Circle examined freeways and motorways with the most lanes previously. That was a measurement of potential capacity. Would those massively-wide behemoths continue to reign supreme once someone posted actual traffic volumes? That wasn’t the case except for one notable exception. Comparisons weren’t easy although Annual Average Daily Traffic (AADT) seemed to be a…