States you have traveled through, but never made it on an interstate

[Duke87]

The idea is that you're in a secure transit zone that isn't really even under county jurisdiction.

That made me wonder, for those who use this criterion, would it count as a county visit for those airports the are under county jurisdiction?

With regards to airports, I fail to see how who owns or operates it matters. I count a county as clinched so long as I have been on the surface of the earth, in a vehicle on the surface of the earth, and/or on a structure on the surface of the earth somewhere within its boundaries. This means that yes, an airport layover absolutely counts as a county clinch.

Not that it makes a huge difference for me, though, since I don't fly much and there is only one county I claim to have clinched by airport only (Wake County, NC). Isn't even obvious on my map since I've been to a few adjacent counties by car.

[english si]

These are both layovers.  To have been in London properly you need to be able to dab silicone dust (from Tube tunnels) out of your nose with a handkerchief.

So my trip to Central London on Tuesday doesn't count, because I crossed London mostly on foot* and above-ground Underground lines?

*I decided to clinch road, rather than rail this time (have toyed with Overground via Clapham Junction), and took this route in order to fully clinch the A4201, A5204 and A4200, and add more to what I've done on the A400...

[Buck87]

Rhode Island, New Jersey & Delaware for sure.
Possibly Nebraska too, but both times I was in that state involved crossing the Missouri at Sioux city and I can't remember if we ever used I-129.

It's actually difficult to visit New Jersey without being on an Interstate at some point. You'd either have to enter and leave in Sussex County, or have a destination just on the other side of one of the tunnels. (Or you took a train through, or you count Newark Airport as NJ.)
Based on the states you listed - Amtrak from Boston to DC?

Correct on Sussex County. It was the weakest of all my state clinches. On the way back from a family road trip vacation to New England we came across 84 and stayed in Port Jervis, NY. While there my dad drove us about a half mile into NJ so we could say we'd been there. Earlier on the same trip we went through RI, missing the interstates by entering at Fall River, going through Newport over to US 1, and staying on it all the way into Mystic.

As for Delaware, on another trip the year before we cut across its southwestern corner (stopping to eat lunch somewhere near Seaford) while driving from the Virginia Beach area to DC.

[Alps]

Correct on Sussex County. It was the weakest of all my state clinches. On the way back from a family road trip vacation to New England we came across 84 and stayed in Port Jervis, NY. While there my dad drove us about a half mile into NJ so we could say we'd been there. Earlier on the same trip we went through RI, missing the interstates by entering at Fall River, going through Newport over to US 1, and staying on it all the way into Mystic.

Ah, you were on I-895. (That's what would have connected to the stub freeway just north of Newport.)

[empirestate]

I am glad that I don't have any "weak" state clinches, at least. Every state I've been to, I've also slept in at least overnight. Can't even say that of most of my nation clinches!


iPhone

[Scott5114]

Didn't we have a member here that waved their hand along a county line (not singling out someone, it's rather creative)?

This would be me and Jake. The story was that we were on a trip across western north Texas to pick up a bunch of counties, and of course looking for the most efficient way to snag every county reachable. The target in question was Rockwall County, and our plan of attack was, starting in Knox County, head south along FM 2279, which enters Haskell County and runs alongside the Haskell—Stonewall county line, and find a way to turn west on a county road or driveway to enter Stonewall County.

Unfortunately, we drove the length of the highway and found no such turnoff before FM 2279 curved back around to the east, away from the line. So we pulled over, estimating from the DeLorme atlas we had that the fenceline between the adjacent property and the ROW was probably the county line. So we walked to the fence and waved our hands over the theoretical line. I marked the county in a lighter shade of my "clinched" color on my mobrule map, with the legend "questionably clinched"; I would like to go back and definitively enter the county at some point.

Spend the night in the county? Or just taking a 20-minute nap?

This question is relevant for me, as my mobrule map has a category for "slept here". I restrict "slept here" to mean that I spent some portion of time asleep, in a building. This restriction is to avoid ambiguity when I nap in a car. It also resolves problems arising from Boy Scout camping trips I took when I was younger, not all of which I could remember by the time I put together my county map, and, in many cases that I can remember, the campsite was close enough to a county line to make it guesswork.

[empirestate]

Spend the night in the county? Or just taking a 20-minute nap?

This question is relevant for me, as my mobrule map has a category for "slept here". I restrict "slept here" to mean that I spent some portion of time asleep, in a building. This restriction is to avoid ambiguity when I nap in a car. It also resolves problems arising from Boy Scout camping trips I took when I was younger, not all of which I could remember by the time I put together my county map, and, in many cases that I can remember, the campsite was close enough to a county line to make it guesswork.

I have a category called "Overnight visit", which is more or less the same...sleeping in a hotel would count as this, but if I passed through during the night on a sleeper bus, it just gets a regular "visited" designation whether or not I was wake. (I'm not too thrilled about counting counties that I passed through in my sleep, but it's equally unsatisfactory to have uncolored gaps in what's otherwise a line of clinched counties along a route. Plus, I can't always determine exactly when I passed through them and whether I was, in fact, awake or not–but I can be sure that I did get them.)

As an extra wrinkle, though, I would count an overnight visit if I, in fact, stopped in a county for the night even if I didn't actually happen to sleep that night. But, if the bus were parked for several hours in one spot, it wouldn't count as overnight, even if I were asleep all that time.

[Laura]

FWIW, I count all of my airport layovers because I still had unique experiences in each one. Rather than make some arbitrary classification to determine whether I was there or not, if I'm on the ground there, I count it.

My favorite layover stories:

International: I was in Incheon Interational Airport in South Korea for two layovers. On the first one, I was in a gift shop full of Hello Kitty merchandise (I love Hello Kitty). I noticed a rack of t-shirts and went over to look at them. The Korean lady working there noticed me, walked over, and said matter-of-factly "you're too fat!" I was so shocked! She was right, there was no way I was going to fit in any of those shirts, but I would have figured that out! It was the same honesty I noticed with other Koreans as well as the Vietnamese on my trip. Not meant to be offensive, just matter-of-fact and in simple English.

National: It was morning and I was layed over in Phoenix. I was pretty depressed and decided that I wanted a drink. I had just turned 21 two days prior and had not had a legal drink yet. I walked up to this "saloon" in the airport and ordered a jack and coke because it was the most "badass western cowboy" drink I could think of, lol! The bartender did not want to serve me because my vertical license was torn practically in half. I explained "your ID would be, too, if you've been the places I've been". He served me. I looked around at all of the decorations - animal skulls, cacti, etc. - when I noticed a wooden sign for Jerome, Arizona 5 miles. I asked if Jerome was a real place - the bartender said "Yes, but it's much further than 5 miles. More like an hour and a half away. It's the largest ghost town in America and an artist colony." My father's name was Jerome and he had passed away the year before. I was convinced that my father was "there" with me as I drank my first legal drink, and it was a great source of comfort in an otherwise crappy time in my life.


ETA; I only have two states at this point that are only clinched via airport - Arizona and Indiana. My first visits to Florida and California were also clinched by airport, but I've taken longer trips there since. I originally first clinched NH, OH, and WV via non-interstates. It's very likely that I first clinched PA and DE on non-interstates (I grew up 7 miles from PA) but I have no way of truly knowing.

[formulanone]

Didn't we have a member here that waved their hand along a county line (not singling out someone, it's rather creative)?

This would be me and Jake. The story was that we were on a trip across western north Texas to pick up a bunch of counties, and of course looking for the most efficient way to snag every county reachable. The target in question was Rockwall County, and our plan of attack was, starting in Knox County, head south along FM 2279, which enters Haskell County and runs alongside the Haskell–Stonewall county line, and find a way to turn west on a county road or driveway to enter Stonewall County.

Unfortunately, we drove the length of the highway and found no such turnoff before FM 2279 curved back around to the east, away from the line. So we pulled over, estimating from the DeLorme atlas we had that the fenceline between the adjacent property and the ROW was probably the county line. So we walked to the fence and waved our hands over the theoretical line. I marked the county in a lighter shade of my "clinched" color on my mobrule map, with the legend "questionably clinched"; I would like to go back and definitively enter the county at some point.

Ah, that was it.

Spend the night in the county? Or just taking a 20-minute nap?

This question is relevant for me, as my mobrule map has a category for "slept here". I restrict "slept here" to mean that I spent some portion of time asleep, in a building.

I have a category called "Overnight visit", which is more or less the same...sleeping in a hotel would count as this, but if I passed through during the night on a sleeper bus, it just gets a regular "visited" designation whether or not I was wake.

Pretty much what I do; there's a separate category for the airport layover-only counties and those for overnight (whether living there for years, a week, or just spending one night). I suppose you usually have a meal, so that pretty much defines a basic tenet of "being there".

International: I was in Incheon Interational Airport in South Korea for two layovers. On the first one, I was in a gift shop full of Hello Kitty merchandise (I love Hello Kitty).

Terminal 5 at LAX has a collection of the KH stuff; to the point my daughter wants me to keep going back to Los Angeles, because she think that's where it's made.

Airport terminals aren't always a drab collection of materials; there's some unique things about each one, and some have some local color and design, even if just the terminal artwork; FLL's brassy inlays on the floors, meant to resemble sand on the beach, and the coral designs on the walls; SEA's salmon, leading you to the water fountains...things like that. And I tend to strike up some conversations that you wouldn't necessarily get from a diner or from roadgeeking alone in a large enough airport, although some of it is the usual weary flight stories, travel tips, and how-to-get-this-from-that-airline tales.

That said, they're also places I'd like to visit just because they're big enough cities I'd like to see again one day from outside the fences.

[Charles2]

Back to the original question:

I've been to 37 states (all except AK, AZ, CA, HI, ID, ME, MT, ND, OR, RI, UT, WA & WY).  The only states that I've visited and not made it onto at least a little bit of Interstate pavement are MN (changed planes there in my only visit), NH, NV (taxi passed by a junction for I-15 in Vegas, but we never got on it), SD (crossed over I-29, but continued on SR-50), VT and WI. 

[hobsini2]

If the question is at the time of clinching the state, here are mine with where/route:

Alaska - Layover at Anchorage Airport July 1996 (Still have not been on any Interstate.)
California - Layover at LAX Airport July 1996 (Still have not been on any Interstate.)
Colorado - US 385 south of Lamar May 2004 (Since been on I-25, I-70, I-76, and I-270.)
District of Columbia - Amtrak train June 1985 (Still have not been on any Interstate.)
Kansas - US 83 from Nebraska to Oklahoma May 2000 (Since been on I-35, I-70, I-135, I-470, I-235, I-335, and I-435.)
Maryland - Amtrak train June 1985 (Since been on I-95 and I-395)
Minnesota - Layover at MSP Airport December 1994 (Since been on I-35, I-90, I-94, I-394, I-494 and I-694.)
Montana - MT 59 south of Broadus May 2003 (Still have not been on any Interstate.)
New Jersey - Layover at EWR Airport July 1995 (Since been on I-78, I-80, I-95, I-280, and I-295)
New Mexico - NM 128 east of Jal May 2006 (Still have not been on any Interstate.)
Ohio - Amtrak train June 1985 (Since been on I-71, I-74, I-75, I-76, I-77, I-80, I-90, I-275, I-280, I-471, I-475 and I-480.)
Pennsylvania - Amtrak train June 1985 (Since been on I-80, I-81, I-84, I-95, I-279, I-376 and I-380)
Tennessee - Layover at Memphis Airport January 1995 (Since been on I-24, I-40, I-55, I-75 and I-240)
Virginia - DC Metro Yellow Line June 1985 (Since been on I-64, I-66, I-81, and I-581.)
West Virginia - Amtrak train June 1985 (Since been on I-70 and I-79.)
Wisconsin - born March 1976 in Oshkosh (Since been on all but I-535.)

[dgolub]

I once went to Bennington, Vermont via US 7 and have never been on an interstate in that state.  On the hand, there's Delaware, which I've gone through on I-95 and I-295, but Ive never been off the interstates in that state.

[dgolub]

Culturally detached is an issue even with driving through.  For example, I only have Suffolk County, NJ because of the section of I-80 that barely clips the border.  When I clinched Fulton County, NY, it was only on Adirondack backroads; I never went near any form of civilization.  All of my more recent travels (as in, the ones where I was more than 5 years old) to Wyoming County, NY were entirely in Letchworth State Park.

I assume you mean Sussex County?  Suffolk County is in New York (and also Massachusetts).

[US 89]

Of the 35 states I've been to, I've been on an interstate in 27 of them. Of the remaining states, the only two in which I have significant mileage are Alabama and Florida. My visits to IA, AR, and MD were quick trips just to say I'd been there, I passed through NJ on a boat, and MI and MN are airport visits only.

(Yes, I realize this is a six-year threadbump...)

[Great Lakes Roads]

Never saw this thread until today.

Of the lower 48 states, the following states that I haven't been on an interstate would be:

Oregon: Was on U.S. 101 and U.S. 20 throughout the state
Montana: U.S. 20 for 10 miles (that could change this year)
Hawaii and Alaska: Haven't been there yet

Former states that would be in this list would include:
Kansas: First time I did this drive, I was on U.S. 66 through Kansas (have since driven on the interstates through Kansas)
Texas: Was in Houston a few times before the U.S. 66 trip made me go on Interstate 40
New York: U.S. 20 first time visiting New York (interstates after that)

[sbeaver44]

I have been to 39 states

No interstates:

South Carolina - US 17 to Myrtle Beach and other state routes around there
Idaho -- ID 53, US 95, US 2, and ID 200
New Mexico -- US 160
Colorado -- US 160, US 491

[froggie]

Since my last post in this thread (6+ years ago), I've added one state (MT) that I've now been to but did not take an Interstate.  For that matter, I didn't take ANY highways...took Amtrak instead.

[ozarkman417]

Only two for me:
NE: US-75
AZ: US-89
This is only because I visited a very small part of those two states.

[J N Winkler]

Upthread, six years ago, I said I didn't count states as visited solely on the basis of airport layovers.  Now I do, though I don't count the county(ies) the airport(s) is (are) in.  I have also since visited WI, AL, LA, and FL by car.  On that basis, I have visited 49 states (all except HI) plus DC, and have travelled on Interstates (counting unsigned ones) in all of them except GA.

[Buck87]

Since my last post I've crossed off all the states I had listed. I've now been on an interstate in all 48 of the states I have visited. 

[kphoger]

Ones that really count
Virginia – US Routes only (plus Amtrak)
Arkansas – US Routes and state highways only

Ones that probably don't count
Ohio – In transit on Amtrak only
West Virginia – In transit on Amtrak only
Georgia – Airline transfer only

[csw]

Utah, Delaware, and Minnesota.

[sparker]

The only state where I've not traveled on an Interstate is Rhode Island; the sole time I went through there back in 1988 I came in from CT on US 1, cut across RI 138 to Newport, and left into MA on RI/MA 24.  Came close with NH, though; a couple of miles on I-95 NB heading toward Maine; cross-NH trips were done on US 2 and 302.  I do count unsigned Interstates, so Alaska's out -- and I have been on all the H-series in HI except H-201, which was commissioned after the last time I was over there. 

[Big John]

West Virginia and Texas

[TheHighwayMan3561]

Delaware is the only one for me. Entered on US 40, left on DE 1.