How do you structure your clinching trips?

[Scott5114]

I just got my Travel Mapping file fully up to date for the first time since they added state highways. I'm about halfway through clinching Oklahoma's state highway system, which is great. But I'm a little sad to see that my #2 state, Kansas, only has 15% done.

My approach with Oklahoma is to do day trips when I feel like going for a drive and just mark a bunch of roads off the list in the same general area of the state. But expanding my reach beyond daytrip range (which I'm starting to reach when it comes to counties) is going to have to take a different approach.

So for those of you who have clinched large amounts of highways or counties far away from home, how have you gone about doing that? Did you just take a vacation in a far-off state traveling within a day's range of your "home base" knocking out as many roads as you can? Go on repeated long-range trips and just switch up the routes there and back? Something else?

[oscar]

Most of my clinching trips take me out of day-trip radius of home, since I've pretty much blanketed all of that territory in Virginia (north of the James River), D.C., Maryland, Delaware, and eastern West Virginia. (Lower interest in the day-trippable parts of Pennsylvania, which has a relatively dense and hard-to-clinch state route network -- but not nearly as tough as Kentucky and Ohio -- plus until recently some Covid-19-related travel restrictions.) In those relatively close-in areas, I try to catch up with new or changed routes, especially in Maryland which is a bit more of a moving target than other nearby jurisdictions except Pennsylvania, but otherwise my clinching focus is elsewhere.

As for the longer-range trips, I have a few and sometimes competing overall trip planning objectives:

-- try to keep up with additions to the Interstate system, though fortunately North Carolina is the biggest offender there and I can usually work those changes into longer trips

-- try to maintain my clinches of the Trans-Canada Highway, Quebec autoroutes, and Ontario freeways systems, also somewhat of a moving target, complicated by the current border closure, and also that relatively out-of-the way Nova Scotia seems to be always up to something with its part of the TCH system

-- add to my coverage of US routes, especially the longer west-east routes, as well as catch up with changes to routes I had previously clinched

-- improve my coverage of state-level route systems I manage for the Travel Mapping project (Alaska, Hawaii, California, Nevada, New Mexico, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Quebec, and Canada's Arctic territories), especially Nevada which is a recent addition to my systems and can use some more "field-checking" outside of the Las Vegas metro area where I spent a few days last summer

-- while I've been to all of the U.S. and Canadian county equivalents, I maintain and try to improve my "round 2" counts, with a focus on visiting county seats (not something I cared much about in "round 1") to improve the quality of my county clinches

-- regular trips for non-roadgeek reasons to visit south Florida (just went there last month), southern Colorado (last summer, to a semi-reopened favorite hot spring resort), southern California and the upper Midwest (also last year, though I skipped visits to my often elderly relatives there, which I can resume as they and I complete our Covid-19 vaccinations), and Alaska and Hawaii (haven't been back to Alaska since 2017, and Hawaii's severe but necessary Covid-19 restrictions plus my reluctance to fly anywhere until the pandemic is squished in the U.S. have kept me away lately)

[ftballfan]

I haven't gone way out of the way to clinch any counties (yet)

[Rothman]

Other travel goals of mine help with county clinching and interstate clinching.  These include visiting all of the National Park Service managed sites and just other sights my wife and I want to see.  So, when I plan a route to those sights, I put in detours to clinch counties and interstates along the way.

I have done both long road trips from my home -- out and backs in big loops through the country -- and flying out somewhere and then driving around.

In 14 years, I hope to retire and buy a trailer (along with a diesel vehicle to tow it).  I haven't really done "hub and spoke" clinching, but I think traveling with a trailer would lend itself towards that when compared to relying upon hotels and family.

[Max Rockatansky]

It depends on the state.  I'll go out of my way to finish things in States like California and Arizona given I have an affiliation to them but with most I only try stuff I think will be interesting.  Either way, when I do clinching trips I try to do what I consider to be realistic each day in terms of driving that won't get me bored or tired (usually 6-8 hours).  If possible I try to find other non-road stuff that interests me like parks or historic sites, I find they tend to break things up. 

I'm not into Travel Maps but I am aware of given it comes up in conversation with people I interact with.  I figure that what I do on Gribblenation is enough of a log and I probably way more on inactive/decommissioned routes for Travel Mapping to be worth the investment of my time. 

[M3100]

When clinching highways that are relatively close to home on day-trips, I have done some planning so minimize back-tracking and overlaps, but that isn't entirely possible.  My attempts are to do large circle routes on these trips, where my outbound route is different from my inbound route.  Using the Travel Mapping site's option to highlight "untraveled routes" helps in the planning.

For multi-day trips/vacations, I do the same, plotting out loops and alternate routes, though there are some different factors here.  I am more likely to have long stretches of interstate or major highways in my travels if I am covering large distances (say 400 miles or more), even if I have traveled those routes in the past.

[SkyPesos]

I don't go out of my way to clinch highways (this may change in the future), unless it's pretty close and only adds a short amount of time between my intended points A and B. I have I-675 clinched because the 75-675-70 routing only adds 10 minutes from where I am to Columbus (specifically, Dublin) compared to staying on I-71

Or I happen to get a highway clinched from multiple different trips, like I got I-71 between Cincy and Louisville on various trips to St Louis and Nashville, I-71 between Cincy and Columbus on various trips between the two cities and to east coast cities like NYC and DC, and the section between Columbus and Cleveland on a trip to Upstate NY.

[NWI_Irish96]

Previously, my clinching trips were limited to about 8 hours as I had smaller kids at home and needed to be back at home by the time they got home from school. I would map out a route on Google Maps that would maximize the mileage of new highways I could clinch in that amount of time. Having taken graph theory in grad school actually helped me plan the most efficient routes. I eventually reached the point where it took me over 2 hours just to reach new highway segments, which started taking a lot of the fun out of it.

Now my kids are older and more self-sufficient so I can do 9+ hour days. I also just took my first overnight clinching trip to SW Indiana.

In 2000-2001, back when I was single and before I started thinking about clinching highway mileage, I took solo vacations out west to clinch all the states out there I didn't have, and ended up with a lot of interstate mileage that way. Got really large chunks of 70, 80, 90 and 94.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

Lately I've structured them around other things on my list. Last weekend I had to run an out-of-town errand so I used it to grab MN 22, 109, and 83. I'm up to around 75% of Minnesota now but after clinching those three I'm just about out of things I can do easily in a day trip. There's a fair bit I can do in Wisconsin, but for some reason my brain is fixated on just the Minnesota side and I never realize it.

[Dirt Roads]

My days of travel for work are a thing of the past.  But in order to qualify for paid mileage, it was always necessary to pick a route that was shorter than the fastest route available.  Some of the places I ended up made that task much easier.  I was never worried about whether I would actually clinch the route, but rather just trying to see something different.  I've tacked on many backroads in the quest of making the trip between the same two endpoints.

[Max Rockatansky]

My days of travel for work are a thing of the past.  But in order to qualify for paid mileage, it was always necessary to pick a route that was shorter than the fastest route available.  Some of the places I ended up made that task much easier.  I was never worried about whether I would actually clinch the route, but rather just trying to see something different.  I've tacked on many backroads in the quest of making the trip between the same two endpoints.

Back when that was the case for me I was just claim mileage on whatever the shortest route was and actually drive whatever I felt like.  That's largely how I clinched most of Arizona and most of Southern California, nobody cared so long as I didn't claim outside the mainstream and put in 8 hours work for the day total.  Since I've had a company car my route has to be direct given for obvious reasons. 

[Roadgeekteen]

I don't really clinch roads, I might detour a bit near a state line if I haven't been to the state.

[dlsterner]

I do several kinds of road clinching - predominately the composite list for Travel Mapping.  To a lesser extent, county clinching and "lowest route number you haven't traveled on".

For the "Lowest Number" clinching trips (the lowest number I currently don't have is 135) one strategy I use is to check the next 50-100 numbers looking for numbers to clinch in the same general area.

As an example, I'm working out a trip to western Maryland to get MD 135.  Looking ahead, I see that PA 160 (which I also need) is in the same general area (around Cumberland).  So on the same trip, I'll be sure to snag it then.

I would hate for it to be a year later when the lowest I need is 160, just to realize, "Crap - I could have gotten it last year when I got 135".


(I do this by using a simple program I wrote to analyze my Travel Mapping log file, and printing out a report of routes, sorted by number, ascending.)

[hbelkins]

There are a lot of Kentucky state highways I could clinch in adjoining counties if that was one of my goals, but it isn't.

My clinching goals are usually US and interstate routes within a certain state, or visiting unvisited counties. It's a bit difficult to do those simultaneously without a lot of backtracking.

[epzik8]

I drove to Youngstown, Ohio and back to Maryland in one day in December 2016. The main purposes of this trip were for me to add a state that I've been behind the wheel in (I had been to Ohio before, and spent the night in Columbus, but my dad was the driver), and to officially clinch the mainline Pennsylvania Turnpike; I had only needed the segment between New Stanton and the Ohio line. With this trip I also clinched Mahoning and Trumbull counties in Ohio and Lawrence, Beaver, Mercer, Venango, Clarion and Jefferson counties in Pennsylvania.

Two and a half months prior to this trip I had taken a similar one for the purpose of clinching I-68. I made my way into Pennsylvania and followed US 30 to US 522 to I-68 back in Maryland. I also clinched Preston and Monongalia counties in West Virginia. This trip also involved the Pennsylvania Turnpike, between New Stanton and Carlisle eastbound.

[Hot Rod Hootenanny]

I think with my travel mapping account, I now structure my roadtrips differently than I did previously.
I used to have some kind of theme to my trips (Lincoln Highway, Mississippi River, (proposed) I-73), but over the last couple of years (starting before COVID) I've changed to now looking for areas I haven't been to before and plotting out a route to cover them. If I haven't been in the state, don't worry about counties. If I haven't been in the county, don't worry about the routes. If the state and county has been *clinched* then what roads can I travel to add to my TM numbers?
---
As far as working on "home" route system (in my case, Ohio); about two or three years ago, there was a thread on here about which counties folks had *clinched* all the routes in, so I started working on counties. After traveling all the routes in DelCo, and the neighboring counties, I changed my game to how large my radius of roads driven on (I'm up to 51 miles).

[NWI_Irish96]

I think with my travel mapping account, I now structure my roadtrips differently than I did previously.
I used to have some kind of theme to my trips (Lincoln Highway, Mississippi River, (proposed) I-73), but over the last couple of years (starting before COVID) I've changed to now looking for areas I haven't been to before and plotting out a route to cover them. If I haven't been in the state, don't worry about counties. If I haven't been in the county, don't worry about the routes. If the state and county has been *clinched* then what roads can I travel to add to my TM numbers?
---
As far as working on "home" route system (in my case, Ohio); about two or three years ago, there was a thread on here about which counties folks had *clinched* all the routes in, so I started working on counties. After traveling all the routes in DelCo, and the neighboring counties, I changed my game to how large my radius of roads driven on (I'm up to 51 miles).

That was me. Glad I could inspire someone!

[corco]

When I clinched California and Nevada I downloaded GIS data for both states highway systems, planned a bunch of 2-5 day trips  down to the minute to clinch the system using the GIS data to color code route segments to trips, and then spent three years just taking those trips as I felt like it. It worked really well.

Given the distance from Idaho I did a mix of drive out and fly out trips to make it happen, and planned those in advance. To initially start plotting the clinching trips I started with what was logical for driving out and back and then used flying trips for the gaps (most of southern California), but if you plan the entire system in advance you can identify efficiencies.

[1995hoo]

I don't really plan trips with clinching routes as the focus. Instead, I plan trips based on where we want to go and then look at my Travel Mapping info to see what I consider significant in terms of un-clinched routes either on the way or in the area we'll be visiting, and I then try to plan something that'll let me get some of those if feasible. One major focus will be where I have a small gap in a route that's annoying me–for example, for several years I had clinched I-275 in Florida but, as a direct result of that clinch, I was missing I-75 between the northern end of I-275 and I-4. So on one of our trips on which we were stopping to visit a friend in Venice I made sure to plan a route that would allow me to get that piece of I-75.

Within reason, if I have to prioritize or choose between available clinches, I'll opt for an Interstate or a more significant thru route as opposed to more trivial local roads or roads that are littered with a bunch of annoying traffic lights. That's just personal preference and being more interested in the more significant routes. Also within reason, however, I try not to double back on the same route if I can avoid it, recognizing sometimes there's no alternative (such as if/when we finally make it down to Key West–no good alternative to the Overseas Highway, although once the trip back reaches the Turnpike, I'll need to decide between using FL-997 to clinch that route or instead using some of the other highways that branch off and parallel the Turnpike and connect up to I-75).

[JayhawkCO]

I'm currently sitting at 94.80% in Colorado.  I think when I finally filled in more than just interstates on Travel Mapping, I was around 52%.  When I decided that the pandemic wasn't going to allow me to do a ton outside of the state, I made it a goal to get Colorado knocked out.  First I did all the stuff in the Denver/Boulder metro that I hadn't been on all in one day.  Then I started picking places to camp/hike where I hadn't been before and made it a goal to take different roads to get there, including driving back and forth across I-25 on all the different Fort Collins/Loveland/Windsor/Greeley/etc. routes coming back from a camping trip up by Red Feather Lakes.  Then I had Eastern Colorado to deal with.  I think I knocked that out in five or six different 10-11 hour day trips.  Fairly painful as the roads themselves aren't too exciting out there, but I am happy to say that everything east of I-25 is now clinched.  Then my wife and I drove to Kanab, Utah for our anniversary and I knocked out a good amount of western Colorado.  All I have left is at least four hours away one way, so I'll probably have to make a trip to Durango this summer and catch the rest coming and going.  Trying to figure out which road I want to make my last one.  I'm thinking CO135 up to Crested Butte seems like a good finale.

Chris

[NWI_Irish96]

I'm currently sitting at 94.80% in Colorado.  I think when I finally filled in more than just interstates on Travel Mapping, I was around 52%.  When I decided that the pandemic wasn't going to allow me to do a ton outside of the state, I made it a goal to get Colorado knocked out.  First I did all the stuff in the Denver/Boulder metro that I hadn't been on all in one day.  Then I started picking places to camp/hike where I hadn't been before and made it a goal to take different roads to get there, including driving back and forth across I-25 on all the different Fort Collins/Loveland/Windsor/Greeley/etc. routes coming back from a camping trip up by Red Feather Lakes.  Then I had Eastern Colorado to deal with.  I think I knocked that out in five or six different 10-11 hour day trips.  Fairly painful as the roads themselves aren't too exciting out there, but I am happy to say that everything east of I-25 is now clinched.  Then my wife and I drove to Kanab, Utah for our anniversary and I knocked out a good amount of western Colorado.  All I have left is at least four hours away one way, so I'll probably have to make a trip to Durango this summer and catch the rest coming and going.  Trying to figure out which road I want to make my last one.  I'm thinking CO135 up to Crested Butte seems like a good finale.

Chris

Surprisingly, Colorado is my 4th most complete state after Indiana, Michigan and Illinois. Only 20% overall, but I've managed to get 100% of the interstate mileage in my various trips there. Definitely on my list of places to spend a few weeks after retirement.

[JayhawkCO]

I'm currently sitting at 94.80% in Colorado.  I think when I finally filled in more than just interstates on Travel Mapping, I was around 52%.  When I decided that the pandemic wasn't going to allow me to do a ton outside of the state, I made it a goal to get Colorado knocked out.  First I did all the stuff in the Denver/Boulder metro that I hadn't been on all in one day.  Then I started picking places to camp/hike where I hadn't been before and made it a goal to take different roads to get there, including driving back and forth across I-25 on all the different Fort Collins/Loveland/Windsor/Greeley/etc. routes coming back from a camping trip up by Red Feather Lakes.  Then I had Eastern Colorado to deal with.  I think I knocked that out in five or six different 10-11 hour day trips.  Fairly painful as the roads themselves aren't too exciting out there, but I am happy to say that everything east of I-25 is now clinched.  Then my wife and I drove to Kanab, Utah for our anniversary and I knocked out a good amount of western Colorado.  All I have left is at least four hours away one way, so I'll probably have to make a trip to Durango this summer and catch the rest coming and going.  Trying to figure out which road I want to make my last one.  I'm thinking CO135 up to Crested Butte seems like a good finale.

Chris

Surprisingly, Colorado is my 4th most complete state after Indiana, Michigan and Illinois. Only 20% overall, but I've managed to get 100% of the interstate mileage in my various trips there. Definitely on my list of places to spend a few weeks after retirement.

I feel like the interstates are pretty easy to get here (maybe I-225 or I-270 might be hard, or I-76 for the 2dis).  I think the US Highways are much harder just because no one really wants to be on US24 in eastern Colorado when you can take I-70.  State highways are sure a heck of a lot easier than Kentucky, Louisiana, etc. and the rural stuff is often a) very pretty and b) the only way to get to certain appealing towns.

Chris

[NWI_Irish96]

I'm currently sitting at 94.80% in Colorado.  I think when I finally filled in more than just interstates on Travel Mapping, I was around 52%.  When I decided that the pandemic wasn't going to allow me to do a ton outside of the state, I made it a goal to get Colorado knocked out.  First I did all the stuff in the Denver/Boulder metro that I hadn't been on all in one day.  Then I started picking places to camp/hike where I hadn't been before and made it a goal to take different roads to get there, including driving back and forth across I-25 on all the different Fort Collins/Loveland/Windsor/Greeley/etc. routes coming back from a camping trip up by Red Feather Lakes.  Then I had Eastern Colorado to deal with.  I think I knocked that out in five or six different 10-11 hour day trips.  Fairly painful as the roads themselves aren't too exciting out there, but I am happy to say that everything east of I-25 is now clinched.  Then my wife and I drove to Kanab, Utah for our anniversary and I knocked out a good amount of western Colorado.  All I have left is at least four hours away one way, so I'll probably have to make a trip to Durango this summer and catch the rest coming and going.  Trying to figure out which road I want to make my last one.  I'm thinking CO135 up to Crested Butte seems like a good finale.

Chris

Surprisingly, Colorado is my 4th most complete state after Indiana, Michigan and Illinois. Only 20% overall, but I've managed to get 100% of the interstate mileage in my various trips there. Definitely on my list of places to spend a few weeks after retirement.

I feel like the interstates are pretty easy to get here (maybe I-225 or I-270 might be hard, or I-76 for the 2dis).  I think the US Highways are much harder just because no one really wants to be on US24 in eastern Colorado when you can take I-70.  State highways are sure a heck of a lot easier than Kentucky, Louisiana, etc. and the rural stuff is often a) very pretty and b) the only way to get to certain appealing towns.

Chris

My last interstate segment was I-76 west of I-25 because I never needed to use that and had to drive it just for the sake of driving it. On our family vacation over the summer, we used CO 9/US 285 to get back to Denver from Can(y)on City and US 6 to get back to Denver from Breckenridge instead of retracing the interstate routes we took to get there. I grew up and currently live very near US 6 so I'm always looking for ways to clinch more of it.

[JayhawkCO]

My last interstate segment was I-76 west of I-25 because I never needed to use that and had to drive it just for the sake of driving it. On our family vacation over the summer, we used CO 9/US 285 to get back to Denver from Can(y)on City and US 6 to get back to Denver from Breckenridge instead of retracing the interstate routes we took to get there. I grew up and currently live very near US 6 so I'm always looking for ways to clinch more of it.

My last interstate portion was actually I-70 west of Grand Junction to the Utah line.  As a kid growing up here, we had school competitions in GJ, but we had never taken a trip to Utah (other than at Four Corners).  I finally knocked that out around 2008.  My last freeway segment to clinch was the Northwest Parkway that I didn't both doing until this past October.  Kind of a useless road for my traffic patterns and I wasn't going to pay a toll unless it was useful.

Chris

[SkyPesos]

For my home state, I still have large gaps for clinched interstates. I haven't been on I-77 outside of the I-76 concurrency, I-90 west of I-71, I-80 west of I-76, and I-76 east of I-80. So pretty much the only clinched 2di I have in the state are I-70, I-71 and I-75. For clinched interstates in neighboring Indiana and Kentucky, I have I-64, 70, 74 for IN and I-71, 75 for KY (I'm missing the very short section for I-65 in KY between the I-64/71 interchange and the IN state line, really want to get that in the future even though it's tolled now). Illinois is a bit better for me, as I have 39, 55, 64, 70 and 90 clinched.