{"id":1893,"date":"2009-08-14T18:11:36","date_gmt":"2009-08-14T23:11:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/?p=1893"},"modified":"2022-02-17T07:46:21","modified_gmt":"2022-02-17T12:46:21","slug":"more-county-counters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/more-county-counters\/","title":{"rendered":"More County Counters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The comedian Groucho Marx reputedly stated, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikiquote.org\/wiki\/Groucho_Marx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">I don\u2019t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.<\/a>&#8221; I must profess more than a passing sympathy with that point of view. I\u2019ve never been much of a joiner, and I prefer to follow solo pursuits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This very blog is an example. I am grateful and humbled that a select group of particularly enlightened individuals follow along regularly but I do this more for my own personal enjoyment than for readership. For me it\u2019s not a contest for eyeballs, but an opportunity to learn and grow from a set of topics that interest me. Nonetheless, in the unlikely event I was to ever join a club, I think I\u2019ve found a promising candidate. Or rather I think one has found me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"county-counting-encouragement\">County Counting Encouragement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/travel\/counties\/united-states-county-map.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/graphics\/counties\/counties-visited.gif\" alt=\"United States counties that I have visited.\"\/><\/a><figcaption>My Current County Counting Map<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I received an email message a few days ago from J. Stephen Conn of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.countycounting.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">County Counting<\/a> website, letting me know that I\u2019m far from unique in my pursuit to visit every county in the United States. You\u2019ll recall that I entered my <a href=\"\/blog\/?p=1664\">1,000th county<\/a> recently and I was pretty smug about my accomplishment (currently I\u2019m up to 1,018). Stephen was also kind enough to feature my county map in one of his <a href=\"https:\/\/countycounting.blogspot.com\/2009\/08\/howder-family-travel-adventures.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">recent blog postings<\/a> and let me know that I was off to a great start. Thanks, Stephen. It\u2019s nice to hear some words of encouragement from someone who has truly excelled at this pursuit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I spent some time poking around his site and exploring the internal and external links. I found all sorts of interesting things as I pulled and tugged at the various county counting threads. For example, there\u2019s a guy who has actually <i>documented<\/i> his visit <a href=\"https:\/\/countycounting.blogspot.com\/2009\/07\/meeting-true-travel-hero.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">to every single county<\/a> in the United States. It\u2019s amazing but true, and something I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll ever be able to accomplish in my lifetime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"mob-rule\">Mob Rule!<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>From there I found the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mob-rule.com\/home\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Mob-Rule Counties<\/a> page. There are a number of useful modules on the site but I found three of them particularly handy:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>It allows users to build maps of all the counties they\u2019ve visited. I\u2019ve done the same on my own using graphics software but this little utility produces them in an automated fashion. The long list of users and their accomplishments proves that my 1,000+ total is pretty respectable but it\u2019s still nowhere near the top.<\/li><li>Sometimes it\u2019s hard to tell whether a highway clips the corner of a county or just barely misses it. I\u2019ve faced this problem several times as I\u2019ve compiled my list, and it\u2019s a big deal. Is the county in or is it out? Mob-Rule catalogs many of those locations along Interstate highways with well-researched determinations and definitive answers.<\/li><li>I\u2019ve complained before that Google Maps does not include county lines (although Mapquest does). Mob-Rule places county line overlays upon Google Maps, thus solving the quandary.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"extra-milers\">Extra Milers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>I also followed the trail to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.extramilerclub.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Extra Miler Club<\/a> which describes itself as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>&#8220;\u2026a group of about 300 chronic road trippers who share (approximately) the same goal: to visit, at least once in life, each and every county in the United States. &#8216;Extra Milers,&#8217; as we are called, keep track of our progress by coloring in counties on state maps. Members pass on their travel tips and experiences in our quarterly newsletter, The Extra Miler. We share progress reports, photo albums, and stories of the road at our annual meeting, which is held in a different city each summer.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s only a few bucks a year to join, and I actually considered it for a brief moment, but then my natural tendencies kicked-in. The annual meeting sounded pretty interesting, though. That\u2019s when my poor wife who has long suffered through my bizarre geo-oddity behavior, announced I should plan on doing that with my <i>second<\/i> wife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ouch. Point taken.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The comedian Groucho Marx reputedly stated, &#8220;I don\u2019t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.&#8221; I must profess more than a passing sympathy with that point of view. I\u2019ve never been much of a joiner, and I prefer to follow solo pursuits. This very blog is an example. I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,22],"tags":[1653,1990,1654,1652,5361],"class_list":["post-1893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc","category-counties","tag-counting","tag-county-counting","tag-extra-milers","tag-groucho-marx","tag-counties"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>More County Counters - Twelve Mile Circle - An Appreciation of Unusual Places<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I&#039;m not the only person trying to visit every county in the United States. 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