I’m seriously thinking of changing my goal eating at a restaurant in every state (Airports do NOT count). That means I have to actually get out of the airport, get off a highway, put my feet on the ground and interact with a local (waiter, waitress, hostess, bartender…). I would include places like McDonalds and Denny’s since locals work there. I tend to avoid those places anyway when I’m someplace new, but sometimes a “nice” restaurant is the last place you want to take kids who have been couped up in the car all day. Though once the kids have moved out, I might disallow national chains.
This means I can’t count my drive through Arkansas. which is a shame because that means I have to go back.
I think LSLGuy’s rules are a bit too strict. I’d have to go to three places in Nebraska? I’ve been to Memphis, Chattanooga, Lynchburg, and Look Out Mountian. That would technically meet your specifications for Tennessee, but I’ve never been to Nashville which seems to violate the spirit of what you said.
I was planning on eventually tackling Alaska with a cruise, but they have shore excursions where I can eat at a local establishment. So I should be alright there.
If I adopt my criteria, I would have only 15 states under my belt. Got a ways to go.
A huge diversity of opinions but also a huge diversity of intent too.
Some people are making very valid points about the nature of visiting a state: getting to know it, eating it’s food, seeing it’s attractions, etc. I think this is pretty awesome - I always try to do this. But I’m not sure it even makes sense to try come up with rules for this, it is too subjective.
But there is a different, almost completely unrelated, intent: the fun game of adding up the number of states you have been in. Here an arbitrary set of rules make sense. Mine are:
[ul]
[li]Flyovers and layovers don’t count. You have to leave the airport. Besides being extremely generic, a simple gate change seems against the spirit of the competition. (A fun argument: is leaving the restricted area enough, or do you need to leave the airport grounds? This distinction has never come up for me, but I’ll go with airport grounds.)[/li][li]If driving through a state, you have to get out and touch the ground. Stopping for gas, etc counts. I can see this being a gray area - just passing through seems against the spirit of the competition too - but I think stepping out of the car makes it grounded (no pun intended) enough.[/li][li]Length of time doesn’t matter. If you stand on the ground outside the airport, it counts.[/li][/ul]
For those who require “feet on the ground” … do you require bare feet in the soil? After all, wearing shoes and standing on the pavement is not much different than being separated from the soil by sitting in a car with the windows open. There is rubber between you and the ground either way.
I count my airplane-changing in Salt Lake City beacuse I had to walk outside to board my plane. So I guess “feet on ground no roof over head” But I also count my drive through Indiana (WI-IL-IN-MI).
Florida is my only cheat state where it was only in an airport, twice I have walked around in a FL airport.
I have been to 35 other states but some were just drive throughs. I had a one day business trip to Memphis. The night that I got there I drove the rental car into AR and MS for a couple of minutes each. That’s kind of marginal but it counts for me. Once when I was in MN, I was taken to dinner in Stillwater. I walked across a bridge into WI and walked around for a while. That’s a little better.
My criteria WRT visiting a new town (I’ve rarely traveled outside Ontario; but it’s big enough in its own right to be one of the 30 largest countries in the world by land area) is that I must stop, get out of the car, and buy something.
Doesn’t matter what it is: a meal, a soda, whatever, I say I’ve visited X town if I have a receipt to prove it.
I disagree with this one. You can see a lot of scenery and nature without stopping the car or getting out. I can understand that if it’s nighttime or you sleep all the way through it, you can’t count it (I once slept all the way through all 12 miles of West Virginia on I-81, and I was behind the wheel at the time :eek:)
My personal rule is that you have to leave the airport if flying and if driving we have to pull of the road and do something. At the very least, have a meal.
