Tag: County Counting

  • Southern Heat, Part 3 (Apalachicola)

    Next we began the actual “road” portion of the road trip as Atlanta receded into the distance behind us. We spaced our drives into four segments of 5-6 hours each to make them manageable. I figured that would cover a decent distance without consuming the entire day. The first leg covered Atlanta to Macon to…

  • Southern Heat, Part 1 (Road Trip)

    It feels like I just got back from Costa Rica and then I’m right back on the road again. True enough, we made it home for only a couple of weeks before we began an extended drive through the southeastern United States. However, those were the only dates that worked with everyone’s schedules this summer.…

  • Mackinac’s Orbit, Part 2 (Counting Fingers)

    The purpose of the trip wasn’t county counting, it was visiting our older kid who worked on Mackinac Island for the summer. Even so, I still had a bunch of uncounted counties in that area so I planned to use that convenient occurrence to my advantage. That’s how a day that normally should involve a…

  • Southern Hills, Day 1 (Positioning)

    I returned to more familiar travel patterns during the current and hopefully permanent lull in the COVID-19 pandemic. This included my first airline flight since February 2020 when I returned from Bermuda. Then the world shut down and I endured the longest period of my life without an airline flight since I was fourteen years…

  • Thumb Drive, Day 2

    On the first day I stuck to my original plan. However, I needed to pivot to something different on the second day due to a storm hundreds of miles away. As an alternate, I could finish Michigan’s Thumb with only three more counties remaining: Sanilac, Huron and Tuscola. True, it would involve backtracking along some…

  • Thumb Drive, Day 1

    My older son had to get back to Michigan State University for the start of the new semester and it was my turn to drive. It takes about nine hours to get there under ordinary circumstances so it involves an overnight stay in East Lansing. Then, I figured, I might as well stay a little…

  • Bogue Banks Bound, Part 1 (Paths)

    Well, that didn’t last long. I felt pretty comfortable even a couple of months ago. It seemed like we’d finally reached the end of the pandemic and we even traveled to Canada. Then the Omicron variant reared its ugly head. I keep hoping, keep expecting, that I won’t have to mention COVID-19 ever again on…

  • Niagara Weekend, Part 1 (Up)

    I had a three-day weekend coming up and four unvisited counties in western New York staring me in the face. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Of course you are, but how could I sell it to the family? County Counting It’s getting more difficult to reach those unvisited counties to add them to my…

  • Ohio River, Part 8 (Ark Loop)

    After a warmup loop the day before, we set our sites on something more ambitious. This took us on a course extending northeast of Louisville to the outskirts of Cincinnati. From there we crossed into Indiana and followed the Ohio River. This combined one very specific destination along with some less structured county counting. I…

  • Ohio River, Part 1 (Orientation)

    The COVID pandemic began to wane as summer approached. Sure, we’d taken pseudo-vacations since its arrival. We went to a couple of lakes and the beach, and experienced an almost normal trip to the South Carolina Lowcountry. Basically we went to places where we could hide for awhile and stay away from other people. So…