50 States in 2021: Check!

Last year when we were in the thick of the quarantine, we realized that our plans for trips to Central America for spring break and to Europe this summer were probably not going to happen, so we shifted gears and decided to stay in the U.S. instead.

We planned a trip to Hawaii for spring break and as for summer, Alaska was at the top of our list. In very typical "us" fashion, it didn't take long before we realized that if we had plans for Hawaii and Alaska in 2021, the other 48 states would be a breeze, so we decided to go to all 50 states in the same year.

We'd been to all 50 states before - we finished that travel checklist in 2004 - but it took us many years to do so. The challenge now was to get to all 50 states in 2021 and I'm happy to say we did it!

As I stated in our "rules" back in my post from January 1, we both had to be in the state and we had to get a picture of a welcome sign. That was it - not only would it be very difficult logistically to spend a night in each different state in the course of one year, but to be honest, we didn't have much interest in every state (and conversely, we wanted to spend multiple nights in some states) because we'd been to them before.

This challenge took us 248 days to complete and with the exception of flying to Hawaii and Alaska, we drove. To be clear, C drove every single one of those miles! I didn't keep track of mileage except for our big trip in the summer, but a good estimate of the total number of driving miles is somewhere around 14,750 for our travel within the lower 48 and if I add in the driving miles in Alaska, the total driving miles is in the neighborhood of 16,275 (I'm not counting Hawaii because we only rented a car for two days to drive around Oahu before going to Aulani, so the mileage from Hawaii is pretty negligible).

Here are all 50 welcome signs, in the order we visited:

SC - January 1

GA - January 1

FL - January 1

NC - January 2

VA - January 2

MD - January 9

WV - January 9

PA - January 9

HI - March 27

DE - April 18

TN - May 29

KY - May 30

NJ - June 26

OH - July 2

IN - July 3

MI - July 3

IL - July 3

WI - July 4

MN - July 4

ND - July 4

SD - July 5

IA - July 5

NE - July 5

MO - July 5

KS - July 6

CO - July 6

WY - July 7

UT - July 7

ID - July 8

MT - July 9

WA - July 11

AK - July 12

OR - July 19

CA - July 23

NV - July 26

AZ - July 26

NM - July 27

TX - July 27

OK - July 27

AR - July 29

LA - July 29

MS - July 29

AL - July 29

NY - September 3

CT - September 4

RI - September 4

MA - September 5

NH - September 5

ME - September 5

VT - September 5

When thinking about the different state signs, it's funny that all three "O" states come to mind! Oklahoma is my favorite sign because of its design, while Oregon and Ohio are my least favorite signs because both of them were so difficult to capture and frankly, a little dangerous, given their locations.

This was a super fun series of adventures and I would do it again in a heartbeat. 42 hotel nights, countless hours in the car with C (and sometimes Ginny!), and the chance to see so many beautiful places across the country!

Happy Tails to you!