I think it’s safe to say that North Dakota has the reputation of being the most boring and drab state in the union, so much so that the state’s tourism board has wittily embraced it. But I’m getting ahead of myself.  I pulled off of the road at the border between North and South Dakota. Surrounded on both sides by sweeping green pastures, my only company was the occasional speeding motorist and a scrum of black cows on the horizon.  I may have allegedly left another pair of

Somewhere along the line I lumped North and South Dakota together in my mind. I’d been told repeatedly that North Dakota was flat and boring - miles and miles of nothing. I guess I just mentally conflated the two. South Dakota has the highest ratio of cows to people of any state (3.91), so it didn't seem like a huge leap. But everyone I spoke to within three states of the Dakotas was quick to correct me. South Dakota they said is pretty remarkable, and not what I pictured. So

I set out from Laramie in the late morning, groggy and undercaffeinated, and headed east. I’d had a wicked case of insomnia my last night in Wyoming. Sleep and I have always had a complicated relationship. I find it impossible to get into any routine or rhythm. If I manage to get a solid eight hours two nights in a row, the third night is inevitably a disaster. Either I can’t get to sleep or my eyes will pop open at 3:00am.  As a kid I had a perpetual case of FOMO at bedtime

It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that I can be a bit of a contrarian. Several people have raved to me about the natural beauty of Wyoming and Yellowstone National Park , but I went into the state with low expectations. It’s just mountains, desert, and a dumb geyser, what’s the big deal? If so few people lived in the state (it has the fewest people per square mile in the contiguous 48), I was sure it couldn’t be as special as all that. I was very, very wrong.

Montana was always going to be an emotionally complicated state for me to visit because I first dreamt up the idea of this 50 states trip while vacationing there with my former partner. But first I had to solve the challenge of how to get my car back from Alaska. I had three possible options: 1) drive back through The Yukon and British Columbia, 2) take the ferry down with it, or 3) have it shipped. Remarkably all three options cost around the same. I’d had the luxury of driv

It feels weird to call Alaska a state. It is simultaneously distinctly American and something else entirely. It feels removed from the...

The driving route from Ithaca to Fairbanks, Alaska took me over 4,200 miles through 6 Canadian provinces and territories in sub-zero...

South Carolina marked the halfway point of this trip. It should have been a thrilling milestone. I should have been beaming with pride....

Florida. The name conjures images of bright sunlight sparkling off of aquamarine water, golden beaches, and Disneyland. I experienced...

Little did I know when I set out that a dangerous walk along a breakwater, a Civil War cannon, and a naked sunrise awaited me in North Carolina. I left Annapolis on a sunny Saturday morning. It had crept back up into the mid 40’s and all the snow had started to melt. There was another cold front and potentially more snow on the way, so I didn’t want to dawdle.  I had a flight booked from New York to Costa Rica in February which gave me enough time to complete five states befo

Mother Nature finally caught up with me in Maryland... My four hour drive from Pittsburgh to Annapolis was uneventful except for one...

After a five-month hiatus from the trip, I felt conflicted as I pulled onto the highway. It was like starting all over again, but without...

If you had told me at the beginning of this trip that my week in Iowa would be one of the most action-packed yet, I’d have told you to...

I had only planned to visit my friends on Martha’s Vineyard for the weekend, but it was so idyllic I turned it into my Massachusetts...

I don’t have much to say about New Hampshire other than I went there. It’s not that the state was awful or anything, I just didn't do a...

I was having a lot of big feelings as I departed Ithaca , on my way to the only New England state I had never visited. The two weeks I’d...

Almost two hundred years before I entered Michigan's Upper Peninsula, this remote patch of wilderness helped prevent a war between two...

I am commonly asked what my favorite place so far has been, and the answer always shocks people. I fell in love with Sandusky, Ohio....

West Virginia has always conjured up images in my mind of the locals from Deliverance , hillbillies from the backwoods of Appalachia...

It’s a tale as old as time. Man goes to Indiana for a car race and a rave breaks out… My drive to Indiana, like the drive to Kentucky,...