The Goal.....All 50 States

Check out this site, which gives you a map where you can plot the states you've visited. I actually found it off Rebecca's blog, "The Mercied," so you'll have to ask her where she got it.

I have only been to 16 states, plus the District of Columbia. That might be more than many people have had the chance to visit, but my goal (which, of course, you can figure out by reading the title to this post) is to visit all 50 states someday. It is an obsession of mine ever since I was a little boy, and we went to Disney World, which is when I got to go through South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, and then Tennessee and Kentucky on the way home. I hadn't really thought about visiting more until last summer, when I got to visit Arizona (a beautiful state) and Massachusetts (lots of history). So as of this post, my map looks like this:



create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

I will get to visit at least two more this year-New Jersey in a few weeks for the Moot Court competition, and Connecticut in August for the Acton Institute convention. So after this summer, my map will look like this:



create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

And of course, here is the ultimate goal:



create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

Here are the top 5 states I am looking forward to travelling to someday:

1) Utah-I have heard a lot about it from my friend who has worked in Zion National Park. I thought I would want to avoid the desert after spending a couple of weeks in the burning heat of Arizona, but there is something incredible about the vast expanses of the West, something that I got only a small taste of, and that made me want to go back. In Utah, I want to see the Arches and Zion national parks, the Wasatch mountains, and Promontory Point, the site of the "golden spike" that completed the transcontinental railroad.

2) Oregon/Washington (tie)-I have always wanted to see the Pacific Northwest, especially the Oregon coast where they filmed "The Goonies." I've heard that it is rainy there, but I'd take that over snow any time. Plus, Washington would be a cool place to visit to see the Space Needle and Mount Rainier. Seattle is the headquarters of Starbucks-one trip there and I could JOG back to Ohio.

3) Wyoming-Yellowstone is the big attraction here, plus Devil's Tower, but really, most of the state is a national park. It's not crowded, and would be the ideal place to go camping for a few weeks, or maybe a few months after I retire. It's probably one of the few places left in the United States where you can go to find real "wilderness," and hopefully I will either get to know someone with land here, or I can buy it myself.

4) Vermont-I'd like to take a trip through New England; a couple of my friends went through here last May, and visited 9 states in 7 hours. Really, I could pick any of the New England states here (except Massachusetts, since I have been there already), but Vermont and New Hampshire would be nice to see, especially in the fall. Plus, on the way there I could stop to see some Revolutionary War sites, like Fort Ticonderoga in New York.