Okay, RVers, listen up. Say you’ve been staying just outside Boston, Massachusetts, and you’re on your way up to stay a few days near Acadia National Park in Maine. To get there, you have to drive through New Hampshire (though only for a short bit, in this example). You drive through without stopping. (Next time, stop in Portsmouth—it’s a great little town!) Does New Hampshire count on your “been there” list? Or do you not count it because you just quickly drove through?
When you’re driving cross-country on I-90 and you pass directly through Chicago, Illinois, but keep going, do you say you’ve been to Illinois?
Tell us in today’s poll, please. And feel free to leave a comment and explain your answer. Thanks!
P.S. Thanks to our pal George Bliss for the poll suggestion!
I’ve had this exact conversation around the campfire several times. For my wife and I, we want to stay in one place for at least a week or two, to move around and get a sense of the area. As we cross off our States map, we want to feel like we know something about a state and its attractions. But others are satisfied to pass by a place, and that’s fine too. The best consensus is, you do you
For us it doesn’t count (make the map) unless we spend at least one night.
Only count the ones we have camped in.
If you have one of those maps on your RV, it’s up to you. It’s your map so it’s your rules. We only place a state “sticker” on the map for the states we have “camped” in.
Would you say that you visited someone at their house if all that you did was drive down their street? Visiting a state means that you spent some time there IMO. We don’t even count overnights when we are traveling to our destination as a visit.
We have to spend one night camping to count it.
I won’t say I visited the State, but my sticker map certainly gets the new sticker as we travelled through!
I count a state if I drive in it, but I don’t count a state, or country, if I just change planes at an airport.
There are states we’ve “been to” and states we’ve “slept in”. So it depends on what we’re trying to convey to our listener/reader.
If I stop I’ve been there if i have driven through then it’s mentioned I’ve driven through. It would be like flying to say you’ve been to Indiana when you only flew over it.
On the other hand if one spends hours driving through a state, seeing the countryside, the farming operations, the rivers & lakes, the different cities I would call this visiting to some degree. I don’t disagree with your rational either.
Unless you were sleeping, you saw things like scenery and driving habits so you have increased your knowledge and thus visited.
We’ve never been in a hurry to get anywhere. We have camped in all the states we’ve driven through. We are both history buffs and love museums. We take different routes just to visit the culture, see a movie, visit a museum. We have always visited the local church on Sunday. We do not travel on Saturday or Sunday. Our number one find was Sheridan, WY. What a time warp. We even attended a free rodeo. East coast, all the Civil War battles. What’s the rush? You’re retired, have the time and if nothing is going on, attend a high school game. We always visit art galleries, flea markets, farmers market, eat a pastry at local bakery. The best so far is German bakery in Fredericksburg, TX.
Totally agree with you! For us, that is the whole point of “seeing the US”! It’s what makes traveling with the RV all about! 😉
May not say “visited” but do say I’ve been there.
Agree.
The question writeup uses two different examples: “visited” NH and “been to” Illinois.
If you drive into a state you have “been there.” That’s different than “visiting,” IMO.
Also how much “visiting” counts? I would definitely say that if you spent a month in Chicago you haven’t even begun to “visit” the state of Illinois.
Plenty of states we’ve driven through multiple times (looking at you, Minnesota and Mississippi) but just haven’t even spent a night in. We’ll get there, time willing!
We only “mark it down” if we’ve camped in it! I really didn’t even do that, if it was a “one night stand”. For me, we needed to at least stay there a couple of days and “see it” to mark it down. What’s the point of saying you’ve been there, if you really haven’t then?
I’d definitely mark down a one night stand. 😉
Yes, so would I.
Not a new question, but I think it’s a “common sense” answer. If you fly from the west coast to the east coast did you “visit all the states below?” Of course not. If the plane landed in 3 states for an hour, did you visit that state? NO, stopping at an airport is not visiting that state. If you drove your car past your grandparents house but didn’t stop to see them, did you visit them? Again, NO. The same is true if RVing across the country and you stop for gas in one state and then drive on to another. If you don’t spend time in the state, you didn’t “visit it.”
Unless your RV can cross most states non-stop, whether you ate breakfast, lunch or dinner enjoying the local fare, or fueled up, you visited that state. Unlike flying over the earth, each mile of travel, viewing the countryside from your Motorhome or RV, you certainly visited. Those who, for one reason or another, cannot spend the night did enjoy that experience in each state.
In order for a sticker to go on our map, we have to stay 2-3 nights and do things unique to that state.
We don’t count a state unless we stayed overnight. That’s our criteria.
We have a 1 night rule. We flew into Miami for a cruise but I don’t tell people we have visited Miami. On the other hand, we’ve camped just inside one state for a week and visited places in both states but I only put the sticker on for where we slept. Added the second state the next summer.
I don’t count a state unless I spend the night there. That is, I have to sleep there, not drive all night to get across it. 🙂
We have a friend in our State ( Oregon ) who is from Texas.. When we were staying in New Mexico close to Texas, we decided To cross the border and take a picture by the Welcome to Texas sign to show him we were in Texas. Then got the hell out!😂😂 Didn’t count that as a visit.
FYI, the friendliest people I’ve met have been in southern Texas. Strange coming from someone who lived 30 yrs in Minnesota (supposedly the friendliest state)! Maybe take 2 steps in next time?
Hey Sue, thanks for the reply, we’ll take your advice! We have nothing against the people, just the Government of Texas!
Your map, your rules. We required at least a one night RV stay to put it on the map. RI was late to the map even though I went to school there. Had to find a campground in the state near someplace we wanted to see. OK was almost a drive by, we stopped 20 miles from the border to spend the night so we could put it on the map. CT was a similar story, very few places to stay. We spent a couple of week in HI and decided to map it even though we had not RVed there, our map, our rules.
I get a lot of people asking about our Hawaii sticker. We were stationed there and went tent camping at Bellows AF Recreation Station quite a few times.
We approach it a little differently. Rather than looking at it as visiting, we look at it as “camping” in a state. If we camp overnight, we put it on our list of places that we’ve been. We keep magnets on our fridge for each state we travel through, whether we stay the night or not. Having said that, so far we have camped at least one time in every state we’ve pulled the camper through.
I guess it all comes down to one’s definition of “visited a state”
When we had a “Places Visited Map” on the back of our trailer, our rule was that we had to at least stay (camp) overnight in the state before putting that state up on the map.
Same here Bob.
I wouldn’t say I “visited” that state but I would certainly count it as one I had “been in”.
We only count it if we have spent several days there and have done something.
As a child I spent summers in St Joseph, MO. When I was older my parents and I vacationed at Table Rock Lake and the Springs area of the Missouri Ozark’s. Those 3 different areas of Missouri are uniquely different.
Because of these differences in just one state I would suggest that you just mark every state you pass through as a state you’ve visited because every state offers different perspectives just a few miles away! So since one seldom can see it ALL count what you do see and enjoy the experience.
Just my 2 cents worth.
Really? I occasionally think about where I’ve been and states I haven’t been to. I’m just glad I had the ability to get out and get going. I went to the Grand Canyon on the only day in history it was CLOSED. On a roadside pullout I was gobsmacked (as the Brits say) just by that one look. Haven’t been back yet. Who cares. If the NUMBER is important to you, WHAT are you collecting? And what does it change. If 30 states haven’t changed/added to your perspective, 20 more ain’t gonna do it.
In the Summer of 2022, I drove considerably through San Francisco guided by Google to avoid traffic jams after dropping a friend off at SF airport. We were camping in Napa. I don’t consider that as having visited San Francisco.
Nope, but then I have mostly traveled in the western states where it is harder to skip thru. This may be different when we head east this fall.