The What’s your tri-state area? thread got me to wondering about another phenomenon I have noticed when crossing the Tennessee/Alabama border on I-65, which I did again just this week. You can almost see the geography change and I don’t mean just the road surface. I can’t quite describe all the features but it is almost palpable.
Can you see a big difference in other border crossings?
For those of you who live near a border between two states, countries, time zones, or other artificial demarcations, expound on how that line makes you relate to the entities on either side.
I have stood on the point on a pathway in Cumberland Gap Park (see some photos of the area) where TN/KY/VA meet and it’s not all that evident where one stops and the other starts. I’ve never been to the Four Corners area, but would like to before it’s all said and done. Does anybody know of a place where more than four geographical entities touch each other?
Let this thread serve as a “jabber joint” for this sort of geographical concept. Hijack away!
If you drive from NC to SC to GA on 85 south, you can kind of tell a difference, but it takes a little bit. You can usually tell by the amount of litter, the quality of roads, and the various road structures. Otherwise, I can’t think of any other distinct borders, except for possibly the southern Jersey toll bridge from MD. YMMV.
I live in (you guessed it) Tijuana and cross the border into San Diego almost every day. The difference between the two cities is extreme.
San Ysidro, the community closest to the mexican border, is considered the ugliest and poorest part of San Diego county and it is still a hell of a lot better and prettier than the parts of Tijuana next to the border.
The downtowns of both cities have the biggest differences. San Diego’s downtown is very pretty and clean with lots of skycrapers and historical 1930’s style buildings. Tijuana’s, however, is mostly rundown two-story structres with lots of graffiti and constantly congested with traffic.
For a while in the 80’s when the infamous Marion Barry and his less infamous successor were Mayors of DC there was, on certain days, a very marked boundary between DC and Maryland - because the District did a poor job of organizing snow plowing. TV crews would be out showing the boundary lines (literally sometimes the middle of a major artery) where the MD plows had stopped and the district slush/uncleared began.
You know you are in Virginia when you cross the River from DC and MD so the boundary is unmistakable and maybe that plays into a “feel”. But I can’t pretend there is a HUGE immediate geographical difference
Crossing from Ca to Az, you have to cross the Volorado River. But the landscape on either side is the same: desolate. Ditto the border between Ca and NV, The only way to tell you have crossed the border is the casinos 30 feet on the Nevada side!
Some, yes, but not around here. North Essex looks very like south Suffolk, north Suffolk like Norfolk, and so on.
Regarding road surfaces, there definitely used to be one section of a road into Northern Ireland which crossed the border several times (or actually, the border wiggled about and crossed the road several times), and the only indication was the change from smooth tarmac to potholes hell. It’s probably changed since then (this was back when Ireland was still the poor neighbour)
I’ve only been to Holland twice, and once was by accident. We were travelling by coach through Belgium, and the drivers missed their intended exit from a motorway. There wasn’t another one before the border. We only noticed what had happened because we spotted a couple of signs in a different language, and asked the drivers about it when we next stopped. There’s nothing else (other than perhaps a ‘welcome to the Netherlands’ sign) to indicate the border.
Time zones - the Greenwich meridian obviously has a marker at, ummmm, Greenwich. But at various other locations up and down the country, often on small little roads, there’s markers of one kind or another of its location.
Basel Airport - actually in France rather than Switzerland, you choose which country’s immigration to pass through as you leave the baggage hall. And on googling for a good link for the Basel tram’s excursion into France for a single station, I found this fantastic page: http://grenzen.150m.com/leymenGB.htm (follow it back to the main page for lots of other strange borders)
Rural Republic of Ireland roads are still awful, I’m afraid, compared to their NI equivalents.
This isn’t strictly relevant to the OP, but the most dramatic border differential was when I climbed a hill in Vietnam and looked over the border into Cambodia. The Cambodian fields were yellowing and diseased-looking, while the Vietnamese ones were lush and blooming. Bear in mind too that Vietnam at the time was dreadfully poor. Apparently the China/North Korea border is even more stark.
Anway, that old “tri-state area” thing - it sounds odd to me. How does it work at Four Corners?
Crossing the Massachusetts border into New Hampshire via I-93, you can tell the difference pretty well. Even though Southern New Hampshire is pretty well populated now (mostly by Massachusetts ex-pats), it seems more typical New Englandy and the atmosphere becomes very different after you have gone 15 miles or so.
I will submit Massachusetts and New Hampshire as the bordering states with the biggest ideological and philosophical viewpoints. It is readily apparent to the eye as well.
Does South Korea to North Korea count? I haven’t crossed it, but I can tell you the border is very noticable with the barbed wire, and armed guards and such.
Wow. I feel the exact opposite. It drive from Primm to Vegas really bugs me because of the road noise. I get this persistant whine from the composition of the paving material. Really annoying. It stops about the time you get to the top of the rise and look down on Sin City.
Crossing from southern Alberta into northern Montana, there’s a difference - it’s hard to pinpoint why exactly. The only obvious change I saw was that although the geography is similar, and they seem sparsely populated, Montana has more power lines and fences when you’re “in the middle of nowhere,” and Alberta seems less “built up” in that way.
The biggest change on the QLD/NSW border is the roads. Nothern NSW’s roads aren’t in quite as good shape as QLD’s, but you’d have to live in the area to notice.
If you cross at Coolangatta/Tweed Heads, there’s also an ever so slightly “tired” atmosphere to the NSW side of the border (they’re 900kms from Sydney, and not part of Queensland, so they do tend to suffer a bit as a result).
However, if you cross somewhere a bit more rural, then the only change you’ll notice is the sign on the road which says “WELCOME TO NEW SOUTH WALES”…
Crossing from VA to NC on 85 South is even more jarring. For some reason, the Interstate is fairly evenly paved with asphault right up to the NC border, at which point the road become pitted concrete with half-assedly tarred over strips where the sections join. You get that “tha-THUMP” noise from your tires for a good 40 miles.
