States We Visited in 2019

In 2019 a whole lot of road-tripping was going on! This colored US map catalogs all of the states that we visited this year. We managed to color states from coast-to-coast and from Canada to the Gulf. Doing more than half of them. We mostly drove, except for Virginia and DC, where we flew. Putting a lot of miles on the old Prius. That was this year, but I’m already looking forward to next year. We have a new car that is yearning to explore the open road. We already have a few trips planned. Actually, our calendar is filling up fast. Places to go, people to see and things to do.

While we are driving, in order to pass the time, we play road games. There is that old saw the Alphabet game, where you try to find the letters of the alphabet on passing road signs, but our favorite one is the License Plate game. We even have an app for that now. We’ve managed to win this game a couple of times this year, getting all fifty states, including Alaska and Hawaii. Timing our play to begin at the start of a trip, we can usually get more than half the states in one day. After that play begins to slow, until new plates become only a trickle, but by the end each new plate is a major victory. We once encountered a family that played a rather restrictive version of this game. According to their rules you had to get the new plates in alphabetical order. That would take forever.