The most boring U.S. state

I don’t get why flat = boring. I suppose lots of people find mountains exciting, and that’s cool and all, but why is the first listed reason for a state being boring, “because it’s flat”?

And if you’re not talking literal mountains, well…

I live in Iowa, a state not exactly known for it’s peaks, and my city is exceedingly hilly. Trust me, with our winter ice and sludge, hills are LAST thing I want to deal with on my morning commute. Although I suppose one could argue that sliding backwards down a hill into the car behind you isn’t exactly a dull event, either.

Sure there is. Aquidneck Island is the “Rhode Island” of “Rhode Island.”

My area has a huge Mexican population. You’re almost expected to look Mexican in some parts, lol. Maybe you mean more central or east Iowa.

Too many people seem unfamiliar with Omaha and are voting for NE. I think having one of the best-rated zoos in the country should disqualify a state from being ‘too boring’.

Why? They look nice, but not everyone cares about skiing or climbing. I’d rather visit a beach, personally. You can have a pretty view and still be boring for most people.

Yup. We got counties and towns that don’t really exist, an island that does exist but people think it doesn’t, food you can’t get anywhere else (and sometimes don’t want to), our state house is a copy of the Capitol Building in DC, Mr. Potato Head statues scattered around the state, and a big blue bug watches over the highway for us.

You can call us stupid, but we are not boring.

No place is boring if you’re actually paying attention to it.

(Probable exception for prison cells and places of that sort.)

Driving on a modern interstate, though, can get pretty boring. You can’t touch anything, you can’t smell anything, you can’t hear anything except cars and whatever you’re playing on the sound system, and usually all you can see is highway and carefully graded highway right-of-way. Doesn’t mean there’s nothing in the whole rest of the state, just because they razed a strip of it in order to put the road in.

Last month I was in Boring, Oregon. Just driving through…

I’ve driven through Kansas and Nebraska, Kansas is the more boring state. It is close though between the pair.

Yes, they both are. Also, the Central Valley of California on I-5 between Santa Nella and Grapevine is very boring.

Map: Google Maps

Delaware is boring, but it’s small. Time has to be a factor in boredom; it’s an essential element. You can see all of Delaware in ten minutes. You don’t have time to get REALLY bored.

Kansas is very boring, but I’ll have to throw my vote to Indiana.

So we need to calculate boredom per square mile?

West Texas, like Ozona to El Paso on I-10, is very boring.

Map: Google Maps

I was coming in to make this very point. Connecticut, too - both are small enough that the initial “Hey, I’m in one of those weird dinkyass states!” excitement doesn’t wear off before you’re through.

Indiana’s another good choice, but I have childhood memories of visiting my grandmother in North Carolina, and remember how interminably long and dull Ohio is, from the outskirts of Cleveland until you reach the Ohio River. (Where the tedium was relieved by an old suspension bridge to Covington, Ky, that used to feature in my nightmares. But that’s a subject for another thread.)

Alaska’s gonna win that.

Except I think we need to allow for population density. So a highly dense small state like Connecticut is going to have far more boredom per square mile than Alaska.

We at least have lovely scenery. If mountains without people gets you going, anyway.

I can’t hear the name Delaware without thinking about Wayne’s World.

Of the states I’ve driven through, Nebraska takes the cake. East-west it just goes on forever with the same monotonous flatness in all directions. There is Omaha, with Henry Doorly Zoo and the SAC/Aerospace museum, so the state is not without its attractions. But outside of the Omaha/Lincoln pocket, it is a vastness of sameness. It was very disorienting when I moved to Nebraska, having grown up in the western U.S. I was used to keeping myself oriented by the mountain ranges and knowing which direction the Pacific Ocean was. In Omaha there were no mountains and equidistant between the oceans. It was months before I could reliably point to north.

Always thought that was one of the funnier parts of WW. Clever humor.