3142 COUNTIES

Welcome to my new blog!

I love to travel. I've been to all 50 states. With the exception of Alaska (once) and Delaware (twice) I've been to each state at least three times. My two daughters have been to all 50 as well. In 2012 I got engaged to my lovely fiancée. A love of travel is something we share. Our first trip together was in May, 2012. Since then we've managed to visit 48 states together. Only Alaska and Hawaii are left.

We decided to set some travel goals. Obviously we wanted to hit all 50 states together. She also wanted to get her two daughters to all 50 states before they graduated from high school. Two road trips in 2015, an Alaskan cruise in 2016 and our wedding on the Big Island of Hawaii in 2017 will accomplish all of those tasks.

But there is one much larger goal. It's something we didn't initially set out to do. But it's something that seemed doable once we looked into it. And that goal is to set foot in all 3142 counties, parishes, boroughs, census areas and independent cities in the United States. As of this writing we've reached 762 of them - the last six of which are detailed in the post above. So we're roughly 1/4 of the way there. Hey, it's a start!

We're not the only ones who are doing this. In fact if you scan the internet you'll find a few clubs of people who are making the same attempt. Some of them have actually completed the task. What constitutes visiting a county? That seems to vary from person to person. As far as we're concerned, if you're in the county (not flying over it) in any way shape or form, it counts. Does that mean sometimes driving to a county line, going in, then turning right back around? Absolutely! But when you have 3142 of them to hit, you have to set some limited parameters. Besides, if you got struck by lightning and died after crossing one of those turnaround borders, your death certificate would state that you died in that particular county. And it's impossible to die there if you were never there.

So enjoy the blog. If my math is right, we're going to have to average 119 new counties per year for the next 20 years in order to complete this task. Join us on our crazy journey!

7/17/17 UPDATE: We recently realized that in putting our county list together, we had inadvertently failed to include two counties that we had previously entered. On a summer, 2014 road trip, we went to Disneyland in California (Orange County). And upon leaving Disneyland for Las Vegas, we entered Riverside County as well. So even though it says 762 total counties in the post above, the actual number at the time was 764.