County Count Update

World's Largest Sandhill Crane,
Steele, North Dakota

North Dakota is one of the states that I thought would be about the last one I would finish with. It's as close to the middle of nowhere as you can get, without actually being there. It's not really on the way to anyplace. It's big and remote and, in tourist terms, uninteresting. But yesterday, I did it: I took a drive out of Bismarck, east to Kidder County (where stands the World's Largest Sandhill Crane, to go along with the World's Largest Cow about the same distance from Bismarck in the opposite direction); north to Wells, then West as far as Dunn County, at which point I entered the last of the state's 53 counties.

That makes 22 states that I've been to all the counties of; tomorrow, as I start for home, I'll pass through the last of South Dakota's counties (having been through 2 new ones on the way up to Bismarck). That'll make 23 states done; and this summer, when I head up to Vermont (if the trip goes according to plan), I'll finish three more: Mississippi, Vermont and New York. By the close of the year I'll have been to all the counties in half the states of the union. And quite a few others, as well.

(And if you're keeping track -- but why would you be? -- the states I'm done with are: Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, North Dakota, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and Hawaii.)