I once snowshoed across the NJ-NY border. That was kind of funky.
Perhaps the most interesting “border trip” I have been on was a hike that began in extreme SW Massachusetts. First you cross into Conn and climb up and down Round Mountain. Then you cross back into MA while climbing Mt Frissell (the trail doesn’t quite go to the summit, but it is a short side trip). Then down Frissell and back into CT; the border along the trail marks the high point in CT.
Keep heading west, crossing back and forth between MA and CT a couple more times, and eventually you come to the tripoint of MA, CT, and NY. I kept going at that point and climbed to the top of Brace Mountain, which is the highest point in Dutchess Co NY.
So, 4 plus state border crossings (one way), a tripoint, three summits, a state high point, and a county high point. All in all, a great hike–and it would’ve been even without the border and high point stuff.
I crossed into East Germany during that weird time when the border was newly opened. German citizens could travel to Berlin without restriction. But Checkpoints Alpha and Bravo were still manned by Soviets and any American soldiers still had to pass through those checkpoints (Checkpoint Charlie within Berlin was no longer needed). So as we spent hours at the checkpoint with our papers we could see the civilians wiping by on the Autobahn. This was to go see Roger Waters perform The Wall. Not too long after that the checkpoints were dismantled.
I’ve driven from Alaska to Dawson City, Yukon via the Poker Creek customs station, the Top of the World Highway and a ferry across the Yukon River. A few times, in fact. The road on the Alaska side is horrible and doesn’t get a huge amount of traffic.
My crew and I drove from Sofia, Bulgaria to Istanbul in somebody’s Mazda. The border guard, who spoke some English looked us and our passports over, and asked some questions:
Where are you coming from? Sofia, where we work, but we live in Belgium.
Why are you going to Turkey? Holiday.
::mulls things over::
So you are Americans who live in Belgium and work in Bulgaria and you are driving a Japanese car to Istanbul?
Yes.
::shrugs:: Hokay.
Like Loach, I crossed from West Berlin to East Berlin and back again via Checkpoint Charlie. It was much tougher for someone with a diplomatic passport than for a civilian. Flew from Botswana to Zimbabwe via bush plane while on a wildlife safari.
Actually I didn’t. When the Wall came down the interior checkpoint (Charlie) between East and West Berlin stopped being used. Between the time of the Wall coming down and the official reunification the border crossings were open to all civilians but not military personnel. The Helmstedt-Marienborn crossing was one of the few places you could use to cross. It was the autobahn crossing between West Germany and Berlin (you could also use the train). Checkpoint Alpha was on the west end of the autobahn. Bravo was on the Berlin side. I would guess a relatively few of us had to go through Alpha and Bravo during those few months. I still have my transit papers.
I’ve been within a few miles of the Colombian border on foot from Panama, but haven’t actually crossed the border. I have, however, walked a trail along the border between Panama and Costa Rica that was sometimes in one country, and sometimes in the other.
I haven’t crossed that one, but I have traveled to Block Island, Rhode Island by boat from western Connecticut.
I had a feeling you would be showing up with some interesting additions. Transnistiria (is that what it’s called now? I knew it as Trans-Dniestr) always fascinated me for some reason.
When I was in Jerusalem a couple of years ago I got a car and driver from the hotel to take me to Bethlehem. We crossed the border into Palestine via some little-used, and seemingly unpatrolled, road.
On a more mundane note I’ve crossed the NSW/QLD state border at the most northerly point of NSW. You walk from the QLD side over the motorway, go about another 100 metres and end up in NSW.
Hey, I’ve been over the Montana/SD border! The road is actually paved on the South Dakota side but turns to dirt at the border. It’s actually a surprisingly pretty area for that part of the state. It’s home to Capitol Rock which was apparently a big draw back when rock formations shaped like things if you kinda squint at them were more popular. Didn’t see any other people from when I left the highway on the SD side till I got back on a highway on the MT side. Lots of cows, though!
The old White Horse Innin McDermitt Nevada/Oregon is built across the state line. It’s closed now, but back in the day the state line was painted across the floor. You ordered a meal on the Oregon side thereby avoiding Nevada sales tax. The slot machines & gaming tables were all on the Nevada side. And at 2:00 a.m. the lights were turned out on the Oregon side and everybody moved across the room to Nevada where the bar could stay open all night.
SS
I once walked with a group of Mexican conservationists and Maya villagers for a day and a night to the border with Guatemala, where it’s just a jungle path. (The villagers were from a village over 100 km away, but whose village had been granted a big swath of land there as a “forest reserve,” though hardly anyone from the village had visited the land before this excursion. The conservationists were there because it’s also in a biosphere reserve.)
A small Mexican military base has since been built not far from the same border, but about 70 km to the east; as far as I know, the place where I walked is still just a lonely jungle path far from anything.
You can’t go from the airport in St. Joseph, MO to any other place in Missouri without going through Kansas.
You have to go through Omaha to get from Clear Lake, IA to any other place in Iowa.
You have to go through Missouri to get from Kaskaskia to any other place in Illinois.
There’s a World War 2 memorial featuring a ship in Evansville, IN. The ship is anchored in the Ohio River, in Kentucky, the memorial itself is on the river bank, in Indiana, the only entrance is in Kentucky and the access road cuts back into Indiana before you can go anywhere else.
The Downstream Casino is in the extreme northeast corner of Oklahoma. The parking lot is in Kansas and the entrance in Missouri.
Basel airport that sits on the border of France and Switzerland. After you land, you can choose which country you want to enter via two different doors which will lead you to the respective immigration and customs counters.
My favorite border crossing was from India to the then unpopular Maoist controlled Western half of Nepal on a spectacularly poorly planned vacation. The best part was when I handed over my passport, and they went to the bookshelf and looked up my name in the big ole book of people not allowed in Nepal, complete with handwritten entries and explanations like “hooliganism.”
When I was in high school we vacationed in Maine, on a lake that bordered New Brunswick. Three or four times my sister, my cousin and I swam across the lake into Canada and back, about a quarter mile each way. We got a kick out of getting out on the other side and being illegal aliens. The water was cold as fuck.
I’ve crossed the little-known land border between Delaware and New Jersey. I think the only state border in the US I have not crossed is the South Dakota-Montana border. Been on the Missouri-Kentucky ferry. I’ve crossed the Quebec-Newfoundland border in Labrador.
Internationally, I crossed the Jordan-Saudi border before there was a road, where shifting sands made tracks impossible to follow, and truck convoys crossed at night and navigated by the stars. Zambia-Malawi crossing required a several-mile walk through the jungle. Also crossed Colombia-Brazil border walking through the jungle, and also crossed to the Peru side of the Amazon. Drove a road in Iran that meandered in and out of Azerbaijan. And one in Zaire then went briefly into Rwanda a couple of times. Crossed from Mauritania to what was then Spanish Sahara, where the border formality was an abandoned hut. On a boat in Iran where officials boarded when it passed through Iraqi waters. A day pass into Myanmar from a border town in Thailand. The Brazil-Uruguay border runs down the middle of Main Street in Chuy, and you go through customs to leave town in either direction. On the ferry from Zambia to Zimbabwe, we landed for a moment in Botswana. I entered Mozambique on a private boat from Malawi, and underwent an hour of interrogation at gunpoint by revolutionary soldiers.
Transnistiria (is that what it’s called now? I knew it as Trans-Dniestr) always fascinated me for some reason.