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

[empirestate]

Of course, a great many airports are owned by the county...

Except that Minneapolis-St. Paul Int'l (MSP) is not one of them.

OK, so you would not count a layover at MSP as visiting a county, but you would if the airport were county-owned?

[froggie]

I personally would count a layover, but others upthread said they wouldn't.  Corco cited MSP as a specific example.  I was also replying to your comment that many airports are county-owned but MSP (again cited earlier by Corco) is not one of them.

[NWI_Irish96]

I camped one night at Bear Lake in Idaho but was never on an Idaho interstate.

I camped one night at Fort Stevens State Park in Oregon but was never on an Oregon interstate.

Only foray into South Carolina was a few miles up US 17 from Savannah, GA, just to say I'd been to South Carolina.

Only trips to Nevada have been via plane to Las Vegas, so I've never driven anywhere in Nevada, but did ride a bus out to Hoover Dam.

My other 39 states visited have all involved at least some interstate highway travel.

[US71]

I think I've driven Interstate in every state I've visited, but Nebraska holds the record for the least miles.

[Dr Frankenstein]

I've been in South Carolina for a week and never set a tire on an Interstate highway. However, I did not drive through the state.

I've crossed Vermont from south to north without using an Interstate highway earlier this summer (entered via U.S. 4, went north on U.S. 5 into Canada), but I already had all of its Interstates clinched.

I won't count all those occasions in which I clipped a corner of New York via Hemmingford Road, U.S. 11 and U.S.2.

[Eth]

The only one that I'd say currently counts for me is Ohio - crossed the river from Parkersburg, WV on what is almost certainly OH 618 to visit a family member's workplace just a few blocks into the state, then returned to West Virginia the same way. I haven't been to Ohio since (this was around 1997 or so).

My first visits to Alabama and Florida (on the same trip) also did not include any Interstate travel, but I have since accessed the Interstate system in those states. Same for DC, where my first visit didn't involve any roads at all, but rather the Metro and my own two feet.

And since we've mentioned airport layovers, Texas and Colorado would fall in that category for me.

[empirestate]

I personally would count a layover, but others upthread said they wouldn't.  Corco cited MSP as a specific example.  I was also replying to your comment that many airports are county-owned but MSP (again cited earlier by Corco) is not one of them.

I see. I was referring more generally to the principle that layovers wouldn't count because airports are operated under a different authority. As another example, since O'Hare is city-owned, would a visit there count as a clinch for Chicago but not for Cook County? (That's for those of you who subscribe to the above principle in the first place, of course.)

[Brandon]

I personally would count a layover, but others upthread said they wouldn't.  Corco cited MSP as a specific example.  I was also replying to your comment that many airports are county-owned but MSP (again cited earlier by Corco) is not one of them.

I see. I was referring more generally to the principle that layovers wouldn't count because airports are operated under a different authority. As another example, since O'Hare is city-owned, would a visit there count as a clinch for Chicago but not for Cook County? (That's for those of you who subscribe to the above principle in the first place, of course.)

Considering that Chicago is the county seat of Cook County, I'd say it does count under most criteria for clinching Cook County.  My criteria is just being on the land within a county.  Some require the county seat.

[formulanone]

I don't care who runs the airport, to be honest. You paid to enter it, after all.

Many of us never get out of the car for every county, and that makes only your tires connected to the road.

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

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

So, everyone's going to have their own definitions.

[Kacie Jane]

My only one would be Maine.  My family vacationed in Jackman once, and we came in from the north after visiting Montreal.

Oops, New Hampshire too.  My only "visit" to New Hampshire was getting off I-91 in Vermont to use the restroom, and crossing the river just to say we did.  (Also my only time on an interstate in Vermont, despite having visited multiple times.)

[Alps]

I don't care who runs the airport, to be honest. You paid to enter it, after all.

Many of us never get out of the car for every county, and that makes only your tires connected to the road.

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

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

So, everyone's going to have their own definitions.

Yes, and that's the beauty of it. I used to have mixed feelings about being in an airport as counting for anything, but I've since erased that concern with my continuing travels. If I have a layover at an unfamiliar airport (say, Rome on the way to Prague, hypothetically), I'd at least want to make enough time to get out of the terminal and stand on the ground.

[roadfro]

How about US 395 from Reno NV to Las Vegas NV - 450 miles on nothing and a 75mph 2 lane road.

If you were taking the typical, shortest route from Reno to Vegas (447 miles downtown Reno to downtown Las Vegas), this would have involved about 30 miles on I-80 from Reno to Fernley.

The typical route is I-80 to Fernley > Alt US 50 & US 50 to Fallon > US 95 the rest of the way (no travel on US 395--using US 395 and cutting over somewhere adds 20 or more miles). The max speed limit on any of that is 70mph, and since the mid-2000s (as US 50 & US 50 A have been expanded to four lanes) only about 320 miles of the trip is two-lane highway.

[DandyDan]

There's never been a state I've been to where I completely missed the interstate system.  In fact, I'm hardpressed to name a state where I was barely on the interstate.  Maybe Tennessee, but my only time there was strictly the Clarksville area, and I did travel on I-24 there.  My one and only trip to Michigan did involve travel on I-94 between Ann Arbor and Jackson.  The fact of the matter is, if I'm going long distance to somewhere unfamiliar, I'm taking the interstate.

[J N Winkler]

Here are some additional justifications for not counting airport layovers as visits or clinches:

*  Airports are culturally detached from the surrounding area (connecting through Istanbul Atatürk is not the same as setting foot in the Blue Mosque)

*  In many countries (e.g. Schengen zone countries, but not Russia and some others), transit passengers are not required or even allowed to clear passport control for the country the airport is in

[corco]

Yeah, the cultural detachment for me is the big thing- at least if you drive and dont leave the car, you see what the county actually looks like. Flying into an airport that looks like every other airport... eh. But I also wont go out of my way to clinch a county- driving into one and immediately turn around feels like cheating to me- the point is to travel and see stuff, not to fill in a checklist. If you have more of the latter mentality then sure, an airport layover probably counts. To each their own though.

[vdeane]

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.

[corco]

In my eyes thats still better than an airport though- you at least get to see the surrounding counties and do a nearest neighbor sort of interpolation about what an area is like. If you fly into an airport, youre in this artificial microcosm that is completely different from everything outside of it.

[empirestate]

In my eyes thats still better than an airport though- you at least get to see the surrounding counties and do a nearest neighbor sort of interpolation about what an area is like. If you fly into an airport, youre in this artificial microcosm that is completely different from everything outside of it.

For the record, I tend to agree with you on that. On my mob-rule county map I use a different classification for counties I've only visited via air- or seaport (i.e., a layover, or onboard a ship docked at port where I didn't go ashore). I've no current instances of this for the U.S., but I have some Canadian territory I've visited only via ocean-going vessels sailing inland waters, which I classify the same way.

But the quote I was interested by–and which I realize you're probably passing along as hearsay, so we may not get an answer from those who actually hold this view–was this:

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?

Then somebody brought up O'Hare, owned by a city, which made me wonder if such a person would count this as a city visit but not a county one. And in the case of the NYC airports, owned by a bi-state authority, would it count as a visit to both states, but not to the underlying counties and municipalities?

A sort of corollary would be a foreign embassy or military installation...would a visit to such a place count as a visit to the home country? And/or, would it not count as a visit to the country hosting the installation?

But again, I myself tend not to count layovers, or at least I count them reluctantly and with a feeling of some dissatisfaction until I can return for a proper clinch of the territory.

[1995hoo]

I personally would count a layover, but others upthread said they wouldn't.  Corco cited MSP as a specific example.  I was also replying to your comment that many airports are county-owned but MSP (again cited earlier by Corco) is not one of them.

One reason I thought this issue could pose a bit of a conundrum is the question of what constitutes a "layover." Is there some minimum duration or is "feet touched the ground" enough? Earlier in this thread I noted that in August 2005 I flew from Vancouver to Salt Lake City on Delta and then had 15 minutes to connect to another Delta flight to Reagan Airport near DC. (Thank God for US Customs pre-clearance in Vancouver, otherwise this would have been impossible.) Obviously I was "in Utah," but I find it hard to justify the idea of counting it simply because our time there consisted of waiting very impatiently for our gate-checked bags to come off the CRJ we took for the first leg, then racing through the terminal to reach the gate for the next leg and making it just in time and then having to gate-check our bags again because we were among the last passengers to arrive. We didn't look around or pay attention to anything at all. Hence, to me it doesn't really feel like we visited Utah at all.

When I've connected at Heathrow going to and from Scotland and Denmark, however, I've spent a good deal more time at the airport (typically most of it in the British Airways lounge) and it feels more like I was actually in the London area for a while, though no doubt part of this is because I always make a point of stopping at the whisky shop! 

All the more reason why I think in many ways it's unreasonable to try to apply universal hard-and-fast "rules" to this sort of thing.

[J N Winkler]

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.

It can indeed be an issue with driving (John Steinbeck famously described the Interstates themselves as a way to travel all over the US without seeing any of it), but that is true to a much lesser degree than it is for airports.  Even when you drive on an Interstate (built to standards which consist of an overlay of FHWA Interstate-specific standards on top of Green Book freeway standards, and so very homogenous nationally), you still get a good idea of the topography and landscapes of the area you pass through.  When you go through an airport, you are on a large flat piece of ground and what you see on the inside is a cookie-cutter interior designed by one of ten large engineering consultant firms that specialize in airport terminals.  (American airports, in my experience, are even less likely than their international counterparts to depart from the basic concourse-pier-bridge architectural idiom.  We have the flying saucer at LAX, the Eero Saarinen terminal at Dulles, and the old circular terminal building--has that been demolished?--at JFK, but all of those landmarks are about fifty years old and have no recent counterparts.  Meanwhile, major European airports have been adding architectural landmarks like Terminal 5 at Heathrow, Terminal 4 at Barajas, etc.)

One reason I thought this issue could pose a bit of a conundrum is the question of what constitutes a "layover." Is there some minimum duration or is "feet touched the ground" enough?

I would say that it is a layover if (a) you never exit the secured zone (airside), or (b) any exit you do make (e.g. to clear TSA to catch a connecting flight immediately after clearing passport control and Customs after arriving in the US on an international flight) is for the sole purpose of air travel.

Earlier in this thread I noted that in August 2005 I flew from Vancouver to Salt Lake City on Delta and then had 15 minutes to connect to another Delta flight to Reagan Airport near DC. (Thank God for US Customs pre-clearance in Vancouver, otherwise this would have been impossible.) Obviously I was "in Utah," but I find it hard to justify the idea of counting it simply because our time there consisted of waiting very impatiently for our gate-checked bags to come off the CRJ we took for the first leg, then racing through the terminal to reach the gate for the next leg and making it just in time and then having to gate-check our bags again because we were among the last passengers to arrive. We didn't look around or pay attention to anything at all. Hence, to me it doesn't really feel like we visited Utah at all.

When I've connected at Heathrow going to and from Scotland and Denmark, however, I've spent a good deal more time at the airport (typically most of it in the British Airways lounge) and it feels more like I was actually in the London area for a while, though no doubt part of this is because I always make a point of stopping at the whisky shop!

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.  For British cultural geographers Heathrow and the surrounding area (where airport workers live) is one of the great stereotyped examples of a cultural bubble.

My personal experience supplies one marginal example.  When I returned to the US in December 2010, connecting through Minneapolis-St. Paul, I had an extended time gap between arriving and departing flights, which I used to take the Hiawatha line to see the new I-35W St. Anthony Falls bridge.  I feel I had a very constrained experience of Minneapolis and Hennepin County because I had to be back at the airport at a very definite time and did not have the freedom to go very far from a light-rail transit line, let alone anywhere in the county that I wished.  However, if I were keeping track of clinched counties, it would be unreasonable to use an airport layover criterion to exclude Hennepin County.

[1995hoo]

I think we're referring to two different concepts. You're using "layover" in the strict sense as the airlines would use it. While that is a correct meaning, I'm referring to it in the practical sense of asking what constitutes "enough" for purposes of saying you've "been" somewhere. In my view–others may disagree–my extremely brief 15-minute transit of a portion of the Salt Lake City airport is not enough for me to count Utah on any list of places I've been. But I'm not sure what would be "enough." Simply transiting Heathrow, even over a couple of hours, clearly isn't sufficient to say you've "been to London," especially since the airport isn't in London (thankfully, I have otherwise visited that city), but if you're there for a few hours I probably wouldn't quibble with the statement that you've been to England in some fashion.

In other words, I don't think 100% consistency necessarily works because to me there's some concept of "reasonableness" built in. I don't know where I think the line is, though.

[corco]

In my eyes thats still better than an airport though- you at least get to see the surrounding counties and do a nearest neighbor sort of interpolation about what an area is like. If you fly into an airport, youre in this artificial microcosm that is completely different from everything outside of it.

For the record, I tend to agree with you on that. On my mob-rule county map I use a different classification for counties I've only visited via air- or seaport (i.e., a layover, or onboard a ship docked at port where I didn't go ashore). I've no current instances of this for the U.S., but I have some Canadian territory I've visited only via ocean-going vessels sailing inland waters, which I classify the same way.

But the quote I was interested by—and which I realize you're probably passing along as hearsay, so we may not get an answer from those who actually hold this view—was this:

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?

Then somebody brought up O'Hare, owned by a city, which made me wonder if such a person would count this as a city visit but not a county one. And in the case of the NYC airports, owned by a bi-state authority, would it count as a visit to both states, but not to the underlying counties and municipalities?

A sort of corollary would be a foreign embassy or military installation...would a visit to such a place count as a visit to the home country? And/or, would it not count as a visit to the country hosting the installation?

But again, I myself tend not to count layovers, or at least I count them reluctantly and with a feeling of some dissatisfaction until I can return for a proper clinch of the territory.

To me, I'm not sure that county ownership even matters. If you're Larry Craig and you tap your foot the wrong way in the Minneapolis airport bathroom, you're going to federal court. If you buy alcohol in the Salt Lake City airport, you're following different rules than the rest of the county. I guess I see it as the court you end up in dictates where you are- so even if Minneapolis were owned by Hennepin County, you'd still be in some weird federal bubble, not in the actual county.

Very rarely is an airport you'd actually connect in owned and operated by a county straight up- it's usually an airport authority over which the county has some but not all jurisdiction. The ground may be owned by the county and then leased to the airport authority, but it's not owned and operated by the county straight up. A lot of smaller airports are- not so much the hubs.

[roadfro]

Very rarely is an airport you'd actually connect in owned and operated by a county straight up- it's usually an airport authority over which the county has some but not all jurisdiction. The ground may be owned by the county and then leased to the airport authority, but it's not owned and operated by the county straight up. A lot of smaller airports are- not so much the hubs.

A counter-example to this is McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, which is a regional hub for several major airlines (including Southwest, the airport's largest carrier). McCarran is located in unincorporated Clark County and wholly owned and operated by the county. The airport is managed by the county's director of aviation, and operated under policy direction from the county commissioners--there is no airport authority board.

[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.

[Alps]

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?