He Knew He Was Right

Since my last post focused on all of the interstate borders, I figure it would make sense for my next one to focus squarely within the borders of my Empire State. Actually, that post is worth a revisit, since I've crossed a few state lines since then, but like many of us I've been focusing on more local travel and that national one can wait for now. I'm sure there's a more direct way to share a Google map in Blogger, but this quick screen-grab upload should suffice. Even before the pandemic, the idea of spending time in each of New York's 62 counties had struck me. At the time of posting this, I'm up to 55 of them. Drive throughs don't count; only those where I've seen or done something like visited a National Park Service site, a New York State Park, attended a sporting event, etc, count for my purposes. My first attempt at keeping tabs of my New York travels was with a simple outline view of the counties, where I put a checkmark in each one as I recall...

I don't think I had ever once wondered how many different borders there are among the lower 48 states before seeing a Facebook group post the following list a few years ago. It definitely caught my attention. Without flying or using ferries, here are the 107 state borders that can be crossed by driving. Alabama Florida Alabama Georgia Alabama Mississippi   ✅ Alabama Tennessee   ✅ Arizona California   🙁 Arizona Colorado   ✅🥾 Arizona New Mexico   ✅🥾 Arizona Nevada   ✅ Arizona  Utah   ✅🥾 Arkansas Louisiana   ✅ Arkansas Mississippi   🙁 Arkansas Missouri   🙁 Arkansas Oklahoma   ✅ Arkansas Tennessee   ✅ Arkansas Texas   ✅ California Nevada   ✅🥾 California Oregon   ✅ Colorado Kansas Colorado Ne...

I may be HKHWR here, but on other social media sites, I am--or was--tthrash. I had been "tthrash" on Instagram since about 2012. I had my site built up to nearly 950 posts and topped out at just over ~300 followers. It was kind of my go-to on the road, as it was an easy place to share a quick picture, stamp a location and get the attention of interested friends and travelers. Its Stories feature was great for adding other details to posts, such as the local current weather, a relevant hashtag, etc. I was never looking for fame, but rather just a nice site to share pictures and stories of my interests, most of which were travel related, and some of which were connected to my affinity for craft beer. I used plenty of hashtags, but always tried writing them into my captions, rather than just stacking them all at the end. It even became a bit of a writing challenge to myself in fact. Then, my account was hacked on Nov 1. I received an email from Instagram that my passwor...

My All 50 States Club pin It was November 2004 when I joined the all-50-states club. A quest that I first considered possible in 1991 was completed when west coast work trips two out of three weeks simply screamed for me to arrange flying to Hawaii for the week in the middle. Noting cheap inter-island flights, I charted the Hawaiian adventure with several days each on Oahu, Maui and the Big Island, and knocked off the Aloha State's two National Parks (and the Valor in the Pacific NHS) before ever setting touching all 59 of them as a possible travel goal.  I actually knew the year before I'd be heading to Hawaii, as I enjoyed a great Alaskan trip that included a boat tour operator in Kenaii Fjords National Park precisely pointing the boat southward and noting that the next land mass we'd hit would be Hawaii. "Next year," I remember thinking. It made sense to me after all that the 49th and 50th states would be the 49th and 50th I visited.  Further, if w...

With the Minor League baseball season wrapping up, I confidently state that I don't expect to visit any new ballparks this year. Well, there is that one ballpark down in…no, no; not this season. Looking back over this past spring and summer, I am happy with visiting a dozen new stadiums. Some ballparks were visited as fulfillment of wish-list objectives, while others were attended to round out itineraries for day trips, overnighters or as part of my grander summer vacation out west. As I mull over where I've been and what I still need to see, it seems that I'll most likely never visit every MiLB venue, but I'll note that my various wish lists and travel goals—ballpark, National Parks and otherwise—will allow me to eliminate some new ballparks each season from the proverbial to-do list. Perhaps I'll get to half of them, or maybe 100 of them, but all 160 seems doubtful. Just for the sake of parsing out my ballpark travel goals a bit and sharing some of my...

From August 4, 2013 through the start of this MLB season, it felt good knowing that I had seen all 30 teams play in their current home ballpark. I've watched the home team play in a total of 43 ballparks, in fact. The Braves opening their new stadium this year of course knocked me out of that all-30 club. Surprisingly to me, though, I didn't feel an overwhelming urge to visit the new ballpark as soon as the season got underway. I was perfectly content to wait until the NFL schedule release later in April to see if I might in one weekend couple a visit to SunTrust park with one to Mercedez-Benz stadium to catch the Falcons in their new digs. A few weeks later, the scheduling gods did set up the alignment I sought, but I balked when realizing the football half of the setup was a Sunday night game in their new stadium's debut. While that'd be nice to see, chances are it's going to be more expensive than I'd like. So, I still haven't made plans to see the B...

I must have used more paste when gluing my ski map to its cork base, because it is not sagging at all. After all, there are a mere 45 pins on it, the vast majority of which are on the upper right side. No, there are few pins in the Cascades, Rockies and Sierra Mountains, and not enough to sufficiently prevent the sagging, lumping and other visible eyesores afflicting my National Park map discussed in my previous post . The problem with this one is the pin color selection. Clearly red pins against a red mountain outline was not the most prudent decision. Then again, nor would have white, black or blue pins been any better. Green and yellow pins might stand out more, but they just don't seem like ski colors, do they? Anyway, I may buy some bigger pins next time I'm in a crafts store. I'll also try to get a clearer picture, but, for now, here is a tabular representation of my ski resort visits; as with my last map, resorts are sorted alphabetically by state, and here foll...