Twelve Mile Circle – An Appreciation of Unusual Places

Tag: Tennessee

  • Tennessee I-40 Time Zone Crossing

    So you’re driving along Interstate 40 in eastern Tennessee and you want to know where the time changes. Let’s make this easy. It happens between Mile Markers 340 and 341. If you’re driving westbound, going from Eastern Time into Central Time, set your coordinates to: 35.895888°, -84.701530° If you’re driving eastbound, going from Central Time…

  • Counties in Tennessee that I have Visited

    There are 95 Counties in Tennessee – “The Volunteer State“ Also be sure to see my United States County Counting Page for the rest of the states. I have visited 54 Counties = 56.8% of Counties in Tennessee Counties visited are colored-in; counties still needing to be visited are blank.  Map created using Mob Rule.…

  • Jack Daniel Distillery

    Lynchburg, Moore Co., Tennessee, USA (April 2010) The Jack Daniel Distillery offers one of the best tours of any production facility I’ve ever had an opportunity to visit. It’s comprehensive, informative and efficient. They obviously get a lot of visitors and the know how to put on an entertaining session. A visit to the distillery…

  • Cross-Country, Part 5 (The Eastern Half)

    We actually did a lot more than collect new counties and visit zoos.  After all, we sat in a car for five days!  I needed to stop every couple of hours to stretch my legs.  Sometimes we timed our layovers to see something interesting and sometimes things had a way of finding us.  The open…

  • Cross-Country, Part 3 (County Counting)

    I wanted to grab some new counties. That basic objective served as a guidepost, the unifying premise for the entire trip.  We would see other things along the route and during most of a week in Phoenix, Arizona, of course.  However, make no mistake, I wanted the new counties more than anything else.  As noted…

  • Simply Boring

    Speaking of boring places, the phenomenon didn’t confine itself exclusively to Oregon. Sure, the largest Boring town existed just outside of Portland. However, because Boring was also a surname, it spread to other locations as one might expect. Residents tended to have the same sense of humor about living in Boring places everywhere. The same…

  • Recent YIMBY

    I posted an article called Recent NIMBY just before I left on my Heartland trip. It dealt with the “Not in My Back Yard” phenomenon. People often agree with development until it comes too close to their homes. They don’t want anything that might “negatively” affect the value of their properties. Sometimes their arguments seem…

  • What the Cove?

    What does someone call a short street with only a single outlet to a larger street? I wondered because I found different terms that varied geographically. There seemed to be a cultural dimension to it as well. Certain suffixes seemed to be more prevalent in the United Kingdom and others in the United States, with…

  • Great Scott

    It occurred to me that a great general like Winfield Scott probably influenced place names beyond the recently-featured Scott’s Addition in Richmond, Virginia. Citizens considered him a national hero during his lifetime even if we don’t hear much about him today. This period also coincided with a rapid expansion of population and migration. They needed…

  • Inland Hurricane

    Hurricanes often hit the eastern parts of the United States. Generally they concentrate on the Atlantic side of the nation or along the Gulf of Mexico coastline. However, sometimes they move inland, weakening as they push away from open water. Those can cause massive flooding and damage. None of them ever pushed all the way…