Rich Mintz  

Here are my counties visited in these states, up to this point. (More info) I’m embarrassed about California — I lived there half my life, and yet there are Shameful Gaps in my county coverage.

Here are my Alabama counties visited, up to this point. (More info) Not positive about Cherokee, so I’m leaving it out, but when I update Georgia I might decide to tag it.

Because I have a geeky side (shh, don’t tell), I’m a subscriber to various roadgeek email lists, where I was recently reminded that there exists a longstanding web site to keep track of which US counties you’ve visited, and people actually do this. And are competitive about it.

And have arguments about what kinds of visits count. Some people say it only counts if you step into the county courthouse. Some people say you have to see the county courthouse, or set foot in the zip code where the main post office for the county seat is located. Some people say it doesn’t count unless your feet touch the bare earth of the county, so changing planes doesn’t count unless you step out of the airport. (Note: That rule is patent lunacy. Oh, and on an unrelated note, I count myself as having set foot in France due to stepping out through border control and back in while changing planes at Charles de Gaulle on the way from Hamburg to Atlanta. I never left the airport, but my passport says I was in France, so I was in France!)

But most people, myself included, respect a looser standard that permits what someone on the list recently referred to as “bipping,” which means taking a detour on a road trip to drive just over the county line of a new county, and then turning right back around and going on your way. (That is how I first set foot in Vermont, back in about 1984, by making a side trip from Keene, New Hampshire, and getting out of the car in the parking lot of a place called Basketville, no joke. It’s also how I first visited Alabama, and I remember finding it funny that the road I was on, in northwest Georgia — in Chattooga County, if you want me to be precise — turned to a dirt track at the Alabama state line. But I digress)

Many years ago I started keeping track of my Georgia counties visited (which, I see, are far out of date at this point — the ones I bothered to tag comprise mostly metro Atlanta and the road to Savannah). I just now filled in my Arkansas counties visited, which you can see by clicking the image above. To fill in the whole US, it’s going to take some time and some reconstruction with a good map that shows county lines in front of me, but I’ll get there. And then I’ll be able to show you a gigantic US map of every place I’ve ever been.