Tag: County Counting
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Interior Alaska, Part 7 (Richardson Highway & More)
Next we explored the one remaining direction outward from Fairbanks that we hadn’t seen before, heading towards the southeast on the Richardson Highway. This day-trip took us about a hundred miles down to Delta Junction, where we turned around and came back. I’ll describe points of interest along the route sequentially starting from Fairbanks. In…
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Interior Alaska, Part 4 (Parks Highway)
Fairbanks is by far the most populated area of Interior Alaska so it made a great base for launching day trips. Our first adventure led southwest on the Parks Highway. I assumed Denali National Park and Preserve and the Denali State Park influenced the highway’s name. However, it actually referred to George Parks, an Alaska…
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Interior Alaska, Part 1 (Golden Heart)
Fairbanks calls itself the Golden Heart of Alaska, a nod to its gold-rush past, its geographic placement deep within Interior Alaska, and presumably its demeanor. It’s the second largest metropolitan area in the state but it also feels like a small town. And that’s to be expected because even though it’s Alaska’s second largest metro,…
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Ontario, Day 1 (Choices)
I’ve been to Canada a few times but never for very long. One time when I was a kid, maybe ten years old, we went to Toronto for a couple of days. It was so long ago that I can’t even remember most of the details anymore. However, every trip I’ve done afterwards lasted no…
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Taming the Frontier, Part 1
I didn’t have a proper vacation in awhile. Then, unexpectedly, I had abundant time on my hands. I also needed to bring a kid home from Michigan State University who just finished the first year of a graduate program. So I planned a delightfully inefficient route through rural eastern Ohio to build my County Counting…
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Culpeper Co., Virginia
I enjoy county counting but it becomes increasingly difficult to reach new counties as my count increases. That’s why I began a sub-variant involving overnight counties. You see it counts “more” by my arbitrary rules if I spend an entire night there instead of simply passing through. That’s because it involves a tangible financial commitment,…
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Inland Northwest, Day 1 (Staging)
Was there a name for that largely empty space beyond Washington’s Cascades Range and into the Idaho Panhandle? A little research suggested the Inland Northwest, or perhaps a now lesser-used designation, the Inland Empire (not to be confused with a similarly named area of California). Anyway, that’s where I traveled for a few days on…
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Cicada Chase, Day 2
The first day of cicada chasing exceeded expectations and we hoped for similar results on the second. However the weather began to change overnight with downpours possible during daylight hours. Local meteorologists predicted a line of thunderstorms rolling through the Midwest, approaching from the west. It would hit Peoria, Illinois mid-morning and St. Louis, Missouri…
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Detour to Ashtabula
About two and a half years ago I planned to capture three unvisited counties at the far northeastern corner of Ohio. Unfortunately it didn’t happen due to a snowstorm that dumped about a foot of snow on the target area. So instead I changed my plans and focused on Michigan’s thumb. Now, finally, I had…
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Dayton, Ohio Part 5 (Venturing West)
My second day of county counting focused west of Dayton, once again targeting five new counties. This time I planned to capture Butler and Darke counties in Ohio; and Union, Fayette, and Randolph counties in Indiana. Hopefully this excursion would also take about three hours like the previous day. Unfortunately I knew that it wouldn’t…