Making the rounds

This is making the rounds so I thought I'd do it, too. There's an online widget where you can map the various states and how much time you've spent in each one. The suggested code is:

• red for states where you've not spent much time or seen very much.
• amber for states where you've at least slept and seen some sights.
• blue for states you've spent a lot of time in or seen a fair amount of.
• green for states you've spent a great deal of time in on multiple visits.

I decided to leave red a few states I've passed through (Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York) on the way to Other Places but did not stay overnight.

Amber is places I stayed at least one night. Some of these are the result of family trips (Virginia - a years-ago trip to Williamsburg when I was a teen, Florida and Georgia were a spring break trip one year). Some are from meeting attendance (Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, and Nebraska - all Prairie Conferences).

I reserve blue for "multiple trips to multiple places in the state" (I have been lucky enough to have been to Hawaii four times, twice as a college-level workshop trip in Natural History of the Hawaiian Volcanoes). Texas gets blue because that's often where I go to shop and I've done fieldwork there.

Green is for states in which I officially lived, even if just for a short time. (Four months for West Virginia - I was born there but shortly after my family moved to Ohio). Longest residence is still Ohio, with Oklahoma drawing up on second (and likely to eventually surpass Ohio), then Illinois, then Michigan.


It seems parts of New England, the Northern Plains, and the Deep South are areas I've missed. Well, in recent years, that's partly the result of lack of conferences in those locations (I don't know many people who'd willingly go to Alabama in mid-summer for an ecology conference. Or Maryland, for that matter. And the Northern Plains states are probably too remote for too may people).


Places I'd really LIKE to go, sometime?

Louisiana, particularly to go see Covington and see if I can track down any record of the distant ancestors who supposedly had a home there. (And to see the Mississippi near its mouth. I'd also like to go to Itasca, Minnesota, someday, just to see the headwaters of it. Yes, my Bucket List is a little odd.)

New York, for similar reasons, apparently some of my mom's ancestors who didn't go to Massachusetts went there.

Maine, just because it seems like an interesting state to visit

Alaska, again because it seems like a really interesting place and a chance to see wildlife (or "wildlife" - I am not sure how wild musk ox still are) that I couldn't see elsewhere.

Honestly, some day I'd love to get a list of the towns that my distant ancestors lived in in Nova Scotia and the Maritimes and go up there and just poke around and see if I might still have any French-Canadian distant relatives left. (Probably would have to brush up on my French for parts of that, especially if I went into eastern Quebec).

I also apparently had some not-so-distant relatives who lived in Kansas (my paternal grandmother's parents originally lived there; my great-grandfather was some kind of high mucky-muck in the Kansas Democratic Party, back in the day)