visit all 50 states

I visited New England during the summer of 2010 as part of a road trip with some friends. I’m only a few states from having visited the entire east coast!

Then I took a trip out to visit my friend Holly in Oregon in March 2011 and on my layovers I stopped in Dallas. I spent the layover with a friend of mine so I got to see a decent bit of the area outside the airport. Then when I was with Holly we went on a road trip into California! It all made for an excellent spring break.

visited 24 states (48%)Create your own visited map of The United States

I started keeping track of what states I’d been to back in high school, the first time I remember consciously doing it was when I was 18 and in New Jersey. I had stopped there for gas and a snack and decided that the only way I would claim I’d been to a state was if I had at least gotten out of the vehicle I’d traveled there in and walked around.

I didn’t take this seriously as a goal until much more recently, the past few months. I was thinking about it a while ago and realised the biggest reason I wanted to do this, other than my great love of traveling, is because my mom told me stories when I was younger about how she traveled to 48 of the states with her mom and brother when she was in her 20s. I looked at those old photo albums from the 70s and loved the sense of adventure and exploration that seemed to emanate from the images those books contained.

So I have 2 ideas of how I might do this. The first is one that I’ve dreamed of doing, touring with a band. I’ve started putting the wheels in motion to get connected with the right people and get a job selling band merch, so we’ll see how this idea goes over the next few weeks.

The second idea was given to me by a good friend of mine. I would make 52 friends, one for each state plus 2 other places of my choice, Canadian provinces perhaps? Then I would spend one year traveling from friend to friend, a week with each person. Spending summer in northern states and winter in southern ones. I’m really taken by this idea as well. I think I may use this idea to provide material for writing a book if I can make enough friends for it to work. Right now I’ve got about 25-28 people, not that any of them know it yet. However, I think that this idea might work very well if I can get all the people I stay with interested in the project as a whole. In addition, because I’m a photographer and painter I would probably be able to make a really interested day by day illustrated book. I’ve been mulling this idea over for the past 4 days and am excited to try it out.

visited 19 states (38%)Create your own visited map of The United States or try another DouweOsingaproject