"Tracing" your State, County, etc...

[thenetwork]

This will tell you how much of a roadgeek that I have been...

Has anybody else "traced" (I don't know of another term to accurately describe this) their home county, state, or another significant boundary as a road trip?

For example, using marked routes, I have circled, or "traced" Lake Erie (the majority being on the Lake Erie Circle Tour), and I have "traced" the state of Ohio using all state, US and Interstate routes closest to the state's borders.

On a more local level when I lived in Ohio, I had "traced" Cuyahoga & Medina Counties using the closest numbered & non-numbered streets to the actual county lines (which was easy to do since most of the streets straddled the county lines -- in Colorado, it is almost impossible since most county lines are along mountain ridges.

Has anyone else done any significant "tracing" trips?

[corco]

I never even thought of that as something to do, but I like the sound of it!

[Ace10]

Well, considering Interstate 10 goes through the entire panhandle of Florida, I've "traced" a lot of Florida's northern border west of Interstate 75. Not to mention tracing the Keys along US 1.

[J N Winkler]

I haven't tried "tracing" as described because, where I live, that would involve far too much driving on gravel roads.  Tracing Sedgwick County, for example, would mean about 120 miles of driving on gravel.  Instead, I have tried other ways of engaging with the concept of boundary lines.

*  For a while, I would occasionally stop and park my car near state lines and walk around to see if I could find monumentation to locate the state line.  On US 26 (Nebraska/Wyoming), I found a state line marker on the parallel railroad line.  On US 50 (Kansas/Colorado), I found what appeared to be a benchmark and a witness post, but could not determine from the benchmark itself whether the state line passed through the top of the spike, or straddled the centerline of the nearby county road.

*  I collect highway construction plans and have done so for almost a decade.  My main interest is in signing, but I also have a secondary interest in how responsibilities are shared across multiple jurisdictions when a project spans a boundary line.  I have seen Arizona DOT signing plans calling for Arizona signs to be placed in California, and including California-specific details such as the miner's spade marker.  I have seen a Borman Expressway reconstruction plan advertised by Illinois DOT but calling for construction in Indiana and containing Indiana engineers' seals and Indiana DOT special details for the work in Indiana.  I have seen plans for a TxDOT-administered project for a bridge crossing the Rio Grande, done in the typical TxDOT CAD style but bearing chopblocks not just for TxDOT but also for SCT and the IBWC.  I have seen Minnesota signs in WisDOT construction contracts, and vice versa, including MnDOT drawings for the Wisconsin state route marker and WisDOT drawings for the Minnesota state route marker.  I have seen drawings for the bridge carrying the state line road over I-35 at the Kansas/Oklahoma border, which I had always assumed was constructed by the KTA because it is in the same style as other 1950's-era Turnpike bridges, but which was actually constructed by Oklahoma, possibly with the KTA sharing part of the cost.  I have seen an Oklahoma DOT construction plan for one of the Red River bridges which also has a TxDOT CSJ number.  Plus there is the TxDOT US 54 (I think) construction plan for work out of Dalhart which extended into New Mexico and had NM engineers' seals for the work to be performed in NM . . .   There are many other examples.

[agentsteel53]

I have done a lot of driving along roads that go close to state lines, simply to take side streets to go into the neighboring states.  sometimes the state line boundaries along minor roads feature some old signs (like the white, mixed case Welcome to Florida sign coming in on some secondary route from Georgia, the six beyond-derelict white guide signs in Massachusetts that can be only accessed in a paved way from a New York state route, or the 1940s California auto club sign on the state line pointing the way to Klamath Falls, OR), or odd signs made by a different jurisdiction (the inverse-video Georgia state route 111 sign on some Florida county route that has been gone for a while now), or just plain other oddities like Oklahoma 20 and Arkansas 43 being posted on the same gantry.

in general, once you get close to state lines, you start seeing interesting stuff, because you get occasional out-of-state maintenance, or just the correct state's truck turning around and skipping the last few towns to make it home by dinner.  (See one town that is the last town heading out of Kansas, into Colorado, on an old alignment of a US route that features several cutout shields.)

in the absolute strictest sense, though, I have traced very few state lines, unless it is straddled by a county road, in which case I occasionally have been known to drive right down the middle and claim to be in two states at once.

[Dr Frankenstein]

I wanted to trace a part of the QC/ON border, more exactly what is south of the Ottawa river. Still planning to do it.

[ftballfan]

I've done US-1 in the Florida Keys and the entire Lake Michigan shorline in lower Michigan (US-31 and I-94). I should try to trace my home county this summer.

[Michael]

in the absolute strictest sense, though, I have traced very few state lines, unless it is straddled by a county road, in which case I occasionally have been known to drive right down the middle and claim to be in two states at once.

That sounds like something I'd do.

[NWI_Irish96]

I have done the entire Lake Michigan Circle Tour.

[Rupertus]

I have plans to do Michigan this summer. I refer to it as "circumnavigating".

[pianocello]

The states bordered by the Mississippi River should be pretty easy to trace, due to the Great River Road

[Duke87]

Crossing state lines on minor unnumbered roads is certainly interesting, in the sense that the border is never very well marked, and what markings there are are going to be municipal in origin and thus likely non-standard.

...although, as I think about it, I have only ever actually crossed a state line on a road that is unnumbered on both sides between Connecticut and New York and between Pennsylvania and Delaware. Hmm...

[Dr Frankenstein]

Now that I think of it, the closest border I could trace is the QC/NY one, but it would involve an insane amount of border patrol checkpoints from both countries.

[Alps]

I often do something similar - "trace" a highway I've already driven by finding other highways or old alignments that are as close as possible.

[thenetwork]

Here is a rough estimate on what I did when I traced Ohio: 

http://goo.gl/maps/shBm 

Since SR 120 dipped up & down between Ohio & Michigan (ala I-86/NY-17 in NY/PA), that was the only time I left the state.
Amazing, that the whole trip around the state was over 1,000 miles!

[Eth]

After seeing that, I came up with a potential trace route for Maryland, stipulating no retracing one's steps (making it not really a very good trace along the coastline).  The route I produced ended up being roughly 1,130 miles, including brief forays into WV, PA, DE, and VA.  I'd need a whole weekend to tackle that one.

[golden eagle]

While I've never intentionally traced a jurisdiction, I have been down numerous roads that along a border like MS 1, which skirts along the western border of Mississippi. I've also done this for US 90 and I-10 along the Gulf Coast and I-71 in Kentucky, to name a few.

[Ace10]

Oh hell, I totally forgot about US 90 and I-10. I've been on US 90 from the MS-LA state line all the way to MS 57 - which includes all of the coast along Harrison County.

[hm insulators]

When I used to live on Kauai, I traced the edge of the island on Hawaii 50 (Kaumualii Highway) and 56 (Kuhio Highway).

[Alps]

When I used to live on Kauai, I traced the edge of the island on Hawaii 50 (Kaumualii Highway) and 56 (Kuhio Highway).

Cheating! All of the islands have ring roads. I've been on a fair amount of their mileage but haven't clinched any - closest is probably Maui

[UptownRoadGeek]

I guess I have, unintentionally. My city is coteminous with its parish (county) and most of the solid ground is developed. I've traced as much of Orleans Parish as possible just by driving city streets.