Wanking around the blogosphere this morning, I found this map of visited states via Tiki Dave. I’ve been around quite a bit of the US, but this map is misleading in a way. In 1999 I spent part of the summer driving around the southeastern US in my Ford Ranger, sleeping in the bed, running, and visiting places I thought were interesting. With the exception of Mammoth Cave, most places I visited were cities or towns. I mostly didn’t care about the countryside, even though I made it a priority to stay on US highways rather than interstates. So I’ve really been to Hannibal and St. Louis, rather than Missouri; Knoxville rather than Tennessee; and Athens rather than Georgia (why didn’t I go to Atlanta, again?). At the end of that same summer I flew to Folsom, CA and drove back to Michigan with a friend who was concluding an internship there. That’s how I saw Tulsa and, even though we drove through New Mexico, I don’t remember a stop other than for gas, so I don’t count it. (NOTE: I just remembered I spent a day in Gulfport, MS, the week before Katrina hit and got stung by a jellyfish.)
This reminds me I should read some more Jane Jacobs, who, in Cities and the Wealth of Nations, argued that cities and city regions were the basis for the creation of wealth. Aggregate state and national economic evaluations were meaningless as they elided the substantial disparities between city regions and unconnected rural areas. The same goes for travel, I think. My map, in terms of places actually visited, would look like a spray of dots across the national map, rather than the large blocks of real estate indicated here.
More interesting wanking available at Common Census.
My map looks like this:
create your own visited states map
hmm. that didn’t work.
My map looks like this:
create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.
a) Clearly this isn’t going to work.
b) cleary you need to get a “delete comment” button going on. Or else I’m just going to keep junking up your site with mistakes. Will you get rid of those for me, please?
c) imagine every state in red except for texas and everything south of tennessee. And that’s what my map looks like. Evidently i’ve been EVERYWERE. and you, my friend, need to visit the northeast!
I only delete spam. Why don’t you send me the url of your map and I’ll see if I can put up the picture.
Yeah, I’ve only been to Boston once and NY, NH, VT, etc. never, which is ironic, since it seems like such a liberal haven was made for me. One of the few places I haven’t been that I would like to go is Buffalo and maybe Cleveland some more, to build my Great Lakes urban cred. Would’ve been nice, in a way, if my wife had gotten a job in Buffalo, but that’s the way it goes.
Although West Virginia, Virginia, and the Carolinas were only while on the train, but I think that’s just as valid as driving-through.
Dangit, it didn’t let me post my image.
It was every state but AK, HI, AZ, NM, ME, VT, and NH.