I’ve been to Four Corners as well, but don’t consider that as a visit to the other states. I later spent more time in Colorado and Arizona, but that was the only time I was technically in New Mexico.
When I was attending tradeshows in various countries, I would put a mental asterisk on that country if all I did was attend the tradeshow, even if it were several days, if I didn’t have a chance to go anywhere else.
You fly in, take a taxi to an international hotel, walk to take a taxi to the convention center, meet the same people at the same booths as the other zillion times you have seen them in enormous windowless concrete blocks and fly back home. If your company screws up and allows you to get an afternoon off then you can “see” some of the city.
Would have. Had planned on it. It rained, and rained, and rained, and rained some more. Then it rained even more. Did mostly indoor activities and visited some acquaintances we know there.
And I’d gladly spend another week in RI than North Dullkota. Good lawd. That place is like being on the moon.
Some states we visited more than once. California, Texas, and such.
Earlier in the thread someone used the example of someone from back east eating at an In-N-Out in California, and opined that that would count. And In-N-Out is obviously a chain, but one that only has restaurants in a few states.
There is an In-N-Out located just outside of LAX. You can literally walk there from the airport (I have done so in fact). It’s a fairly popular place to visit during a long layover. So if someone has a layover at LAX, leaves the airport (but just barely), eats at In-N-Out, returns to the airport and boards their next flight, have they visited Los Angeles? I’ve done that but I generally tell people that I’ve never been to LA. (I’ve lived in Northern California for almost 17 years; yet I have yet to travel south of Santa Barbara apart from that brief excursion outside the airport).
As a side note, that In-N-Out is in a really cool location, just next to the end of one of the runways. So you can sit outside and eat your burger as widebody airliners fly by at maybe 100 feet above the ground, it that.
Excellent example of a very LA/CA experience that can be had on a short layover.
There’s also something to be said for doing something that locals actually do (even if it’s not unique to that place), versus doing something touristy (even if it is). I visited Athens at the end of a semester abroad in college. After 3 months of visiting a new city every weekend, and a few days seeing the major sites in Athens, I was tired and wanted some brain candy. So I skipped the next museum on my list and went to a movie theater that was playing the cheesy vampire flick Van Helsing. It was just what I needed, but it also turned out to be one of the most enlightening cultural experiences of my trip. The only Greeks at the Acropolis were a group of school children; everyone else was from somewhere else. But I’m pretty sure I was the only American in that theater (especially since the movie had been released months earlier in the US.) I learned that Greek audiences are much more vocally engaged than American audiences. They laughed, hard; they cheered and clapped, they gasped aloud at the action sequences. Had someone like that been sitting near me in a theater at home, I probably would’ve glared at them, but with everyone doing it, it became a fun communal experience. Eighteen years later, it’s perhaps the most memorable part of my trip.
You probably can’t say you’ve visited South Dakota if you haven’t seen Mount Rushmore, but you won’t be among South Dakotans if you do. You won’t find Parisians at the top of the Eiffel Tower, or Angelenos on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. But you will find the latter at In-N-Out.
My eldest son loves to claim having visited all 50 states, but I think he’s playing fast and loose with the terms. I’ve driven across ND quite a few times on the way to somewhere else, but I would not say I’ve visited the place, as stopping at a gas station isn’t really visiting anything. On the other hand, I’ve been to Four Corners, but I also went to about 20 national parks and monuments in AZ, NM, UT and CO, camped in all four of them and ate meals in their restaurants. And no, transiting an airport is not a “visit”.
PA: Nope, it doesn’t count. Nothing to do up there anyway! Had you taken the southerly route, you’d have had Pittsburgh, Latrobe (beer!), Hershey, Harrisburg (for what that’s worth… having grown up there I don’t think of it as a tourist destination), Lancaster (Amish country) , Philadelphia…
I’ve driven all of I-40 three times. I did camp one night in some national park…maybe a state park in Arkansas. I don’t think that counts as visiting, even though it was pretty. But my side trips off to see Brice and Zion Parks will get me Utah on the list.
Odd you should use Iowa in your example, because once when my dad decided to take a “shortcut” we ended up driving a lot of lesser roads in Iowa. We were getting hungry, and a ton of billboards advertising a place in Ottumwa was whetting our appetites (Mom’s ,IIRC). We get there, and, of course, it’s closed. We could have gone to the Ploughboy Club (not sure – it might have been members only), but we ended up eating in a motel coffeeshop on the outskirts of town.
I drove across ND solo. But I stopped at Theodore Roosevelt NP, had lunch, and went on a short hike. By my criteria (boots on non-airport ground) it would have qualified no matter what, but I feel like I’ve seen some of ND.
I’d say you’re right. And I’ll say for the record that there is not much else to see in that state. I’ve driven both the interstate and highway 2 and saw little to pique my interest. Come to think of it, I did spend a day in mistranslated Devils Lake, ND and visited their genealogy center (I use the term loosely), which is basically a room full of books piled up helter skelter. I picked one book out at random and somehow managed to pick the one book that mentioned my great grandfather, who had lived there for a number of years.
Some touristy areas only have chain restaurants, especially if you’re going to eat later in the evening. Any chain, including higher end ones (Mortons, Ruth’s Chris, etc.)?
I used to work in a high-rise in the city. There was a nice restaurant in the lobby. Any time we took a client/prospect out for lunch it was downstairs. Close, convenient, no weather issues as we didn’t need an umbrella or overcoat, to the point that those who got to go were quite bored of the place. Cow-orker goes to visit a client across the country in Seattle. They take him to dinner. He sits down & looks at the menu & it looks very familiar. Turns out it’s a two-chain restaurant, 3000 miles apart but with different names so he didn’t pick up on it at first.
Had you taken the southerly route, you’d have had Pittsburgh, Latrobe (beer!), Hershey, Harrisburg (for what that’s worth… having grown up there I don’t think of it as a tourist destination), Lancaster (Amish country) , Philadelphia…