In 47 Sentences

I want to visit all fifty states. I’m not sure quite when the ambition the first struck me, though I suspect that the transition from abstractly thinking it would be cool to more purposefully targeting it as a goal happened in my mid-twenties when I started traveling more for work for out-of-state summer residencies (including my first trip to California) and recruiting trips throughout the year, and for my blog about a cappella music (visiting competitions that included my first trips to Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, and Tennessee). By the time I moved cross-country from Maryland to Oregon in my early thirties, the drive to my new home entailed a purposeful mission of crossing off more states along the way.

I’ve sat at forty-seven out of fifty states for years now, and though I’m looking forward to hitting the rest, I’m also prepared to be patient. The remaining three are Alaska, Hawaii, and North Dakota. The former two are both expensive destinations and ones that I’m invested in having experiences in—while I’m willing to count visiting a state as long I physically set foot there—not just a flyover, not only driving through, and not simply a layover in an airport—they’re places where I’d like to spend at least a couple of days and make some memories. I’m less objectively attached to North Dakota, but have established a tentative goal of celebrating my fiftieth birthday there to sync up with my goal of hitting my fiftieth state (unless an organic or otherwise meaningful opportunity to visit North Dakota arises before then).

For today’s blog post, I thought I’d reflect on the experience of visiting the other forty-seven states. It could be a daunting project—after all, I lived in for more than half of a year in six of those states, and had some pretty formative experiences in others; on the other side of the spectrum, there are states where I spent less than half an hour outside the car on a pit stop. So, as a way of making the task more finite, I decided to touch on each state with the rule of describing my most significant memories or experiences there in just one sentence (and not taking too many liberties with sentence length). Here goes:

Alabama: I had dinner on the Riverfront in Montgomery along a winter road trip.

Arizona: I woke up the morning of my thirty-third birthday in a tent in Grand Canyon National Park.

Arkansas: I spent a morning walking around Hot Springs.

California: I had my first kiss with Heather on Blacks Beach in San Diego; a year and a half later, I proposed to her in more or less the same spot.

Colorado: We stayed with friends for a couple nights in Denver.

Connecticut: I filled up at a sketchy gas station.

Delaware: I made brief visit to the University of Delaware.

Florida: I found out my wife was pregnant the same morning that we attended WrestleMania 33 in Orlando; it was a good day.

Georgia: I lived outside Atlanta for two years and its where my son was born.

Idaho: I visited Shoshone Falls.

Illinois: I spent a week visiting my sister and brother in law in Chicago back in 2006; six years later, I’d return to emcee an a cappella show.

Indiana: I had a really good weekend visit with some of my best friends from college, spring 2013.

Iowa: I spent my thirty-first birthday walking around literary landmarks and visiting bookstores in Iowa City.

Kansas: I visited Galena, a small town that lays claim to inspiring Pixar’s Cars.

Kentucky: I stayed a night Lexington and asked the hotel desk worker where I could find the best fried chicken in town; she recommended Walmart, but I’m glad I tried the Parkette Drive In instead.

Louisiana: I celebrated New Year’s Eve, 2013 into 2014, in New Orleans with Heather.

Maine: I took a walk around the Portland headlight.

Maryland: I lived in Maryland for most of my twenties and I suspect I’ll always look back on Baltimore as where I became an adult.

Massachusetts: I twice visited the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield; also, went to a big concert in Boston—MIXfest—where Alanis Morrissette, Lenny Kravitz, Maroon 5, and others played.

Michigan: I went to a really excellent a cappella competition in Ann Arbor.

Minnesota: I stopped in Minnesota along a cross-country drive, for the simple fact that it was only about an hour out of the way and to cross it off the list.

Mississippi: I stopped off in Mississippi during a southerly road trip.

Missouri: I attended an a cappella competition in St. Louis and hung out around The Gateway Arch the next day.

Montana: I visited Yellowstone National Park.

Nebraska: I stopped off for a night in Omaha, during which time I took a selfie with a statue of Chef Boyardee and walked the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge.

Nevada: It’s rare that can earnestly call a job a pleasure, but that’s what teaching at UNLV has been; after a number of good vacations in Las Vegas, I never expected to work and live in the area.

New Hampshire: I stopped off along a road trip around the northeast.

New Jersey: I worked a summer at Princeton; I also have a lot of good memories from a cappella competitions at Rutgers, often accompanied by trips to White Castle the day after.

New Mexico: I visited Roswell, which was worth a quick stop but not as cool as I’d hoped it would be.

New York: This is the hardest state to encapsulate for having lived the first twenty-three and a half years of my life there; suffice it to say, I did a lot of growing up in New York and there’s a part of me that I expect will always call it my home state.

North Carolina: I got married in Wilmington.

Ohio: I visited the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, and judged an a cappella competition in a barn in Wooster.

Oklahoma: I stopped off for snacks and gas in non-descript Oklahoma locations across two out of three of my cross-country road trips.

Oregon: I had an experience that I will always treasure as one of the best of my life earning my MFA at Oregon State; our apartment in Corvallis was also the first home Heather and I shared.

Pennsylvania: I saw Hulk Hogan wrestle Sting; unfortunately, it was the year 2011.

Rhode Island: I attended one of my earliest a cappella competitions at Brown.

South Carolina: We lived in two different Air BnBs in the Myrtle Beach area while job hunting after grad school; I liked our first place, but it was forever tainted for having had my worst performance ever in a (phone) job interview and watching the 2016 election results roll in there.

South Dakota: I was underwhelmed with Mount Rushmore.

Tennessee: I spent a couple nights in Nashville, including going to one of my all-time favorite a cappella competitions at Vanderbilt.

Texas: I attended WrestleMania 25 in Houston and AWP 2020—just ahead of the pandemic getting out of control—in San Antonio; I also got stuck in Lubbock for a couple nights with car issues once.

Utah: I had my first experience camping in Zion National Park.

Vermont: I spent the night at hotel in Vermont along a road trip around the northeast.

Virginia: I saw the 1980s cover band The Legwarmers perform twice, on consecutive nights, in different DC-area venues, spring 2009.

Washington: I walked around Pike Place Market and visited the EMP (now known as the Museum of Pop Culture), end of summer 2015.

West Virginia: I filled my gas tank once in West Virginia.

Wisconsin: I visited the Harley Davidson Museum in Milwaukee in 2014.

Wyoming: I visited Yellowstone National Park and stopped off by the roadside to take pictures with the Tetons in the background.