Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Tag: South Dakota

  • Counties in South Dakota that I have Visited

    There are 66 Counties in South Dakota – “The Mount Rushmore State“ Also be sure to see my United States County Counting Page for the rest of the states. I have visited 18 Counties = 27.3% of Counties in South Dakota Counties visited are colored-in; counties still needing to be visited are blank.  Map created…

  • Crossing South Dakota

    Adventures Along Interstate 90 (June 1992) We had already completed most of our RV tour of the southwestern and interior western National Parks, and we pushed into the final stretch. We still had some time to catch a few more sites as we sped towards our home and the end of our expedition. The entirety…

  • Body Parts

    The more I thought about it, apparently body parts influenced an awful lot of geographic names. It seemed natural though. People liked to name things after familiar objects. What could be more familiar than the flesh right there in front of them? From head to feet and practically everywhere in between, I found spots on…

  • Focused on Counties

    I’m planning for three, maybe four road trips of significant length coming up over the next several months. All of them will involve significant County Counting components. While I’ve put a big dent into my quest to visit every county in the United States, the total still represents considerably less than half of those available.…

  • Murdo Mystery

    I seemed to be fixated on time lately, ever since writing the recent Time Zones in Greenland. I went through my long list of open items and found a few more timely topics. So Twelve Mile Circle could benefit from subjects of that nature while I cleared the backlog. Murdo seemed a likely candidate. Murdo…

  • Oglala Lakota County

    I pointed out that the the Wade Hampton Census Area in Alaska became the Kusilvak Census Area in a recent Reader Mailbag article. Alaska’s census areas exists as a unique construct. They serve as a convenient parceling of the Unorganized Borough while being considered “county equivalents” by the Federal government for a number of statistical…

  • Center of the Nation, Part 6 (Inspirations)

    I made it to the final installment of the Center of the Nation articles at long last. I hope the Twelve Mile Circle audience enjoyed riding along vicariously. I included links to all of the previous articles at the bottom of the page for those who may have missed a few. I figured I’d wrap…

  • Center of the Nation, Part 4 (Terrain)

    There weren’t a lot of people on the Northern Plains and their settlements appeared only sporadically. Out there amongst the expansive void a place of a thousand residents qualified as a city and drivers might not see another one for an hour. I wondered, where did people even buy their groceries? That didn’t mean the…

  • Center of the Nation, Part 2 (States and Counties)

    Transporting a participant through a grueling six day, six state race series created a huge benefit for a geo-geek such as myself, the inherent need to cover a lot of territory. I’d driven through parts of the target area previously on a cross-country trip many years ago. I’d completed the typical tourist trek through the…

  • Center of the Nation, Part 1 (Center?)

    I returned from my much-anticipated Center of the Nation journey about a week ago. Those readers who followed the 12MC Twitter already received a steady dose of foreshadowing about this event. It’s my final installment from the 2015 Twelve Mile Circle “season of travel.” I took a lot of great trips over the last several…