{"id":9483,"date":"2019-09-01T06:00:37","date_gmt":"2019-09-01T10:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dennygibson.com\/blog\/?p=9483"},"modified":"2019-08-29T14:04:43","modified_gmt":"2019-08-29T18:04:43","slug":"a-lesser-count-of-counties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/2019\/09\/a-lesser-count-of-counties\/","title":{"rendered":"A Lesser Count of Counties"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I was about to queue up a Trip Peek for today’s post when it occurred to me that a follow on to last week’s post on Hugh Donovan completing visits to all 3134 U.S. counties might be better. <\/span>I had actually thought I might include something about my own county counting when I began writing about Hugh’s counting in <\/span>An Awesome Travel Accomplishment<\/a> but, in the end, I didn’t. The truth is that neither the counts nor the counting are all that similar. There are, you see, quite a few differences between a man on a mission and a guy just wandering into places.<\/span><\/p>\n

For one, I am not an Extra Miler Club<\/a> member. That’s not because I don’t think it is a good organization or because I don’t respect its goals. It’s because I do not see visiting every U.S. county as realistic for me personally. It might have been feasible if I’d started when I was 30 or 40 or, like Hugh’s grandson, 15, but not now. That doesn’t mean I don’t track the counties I visit. The map above is mine from Mob\u2011Rule.com<\/a> (a.k.a., Why do you think they call them counties?) which anyone can use to track their travels free. There are 1731 counties marked on the map. That’s just over 55% of the total. Hugh’s count was a bit less than that when I first learned of his quest back in April, but that didn’t last long. My “live” map, which also contains numeric counts by state, is here<\/a>. <\/p>\n

For another, I’ve never made a trip or plotted a route specifically to accumulate counties. On the other hand, if I see that an unvisited county is just a few miles away, I’ll quite happily make a jog or even drive straight there and back for the score. Again, that doesn’t mean a lack of respect for folks who plan their travels primarily or exclusively to reach different counties. After all, I’m a guy who will turn around to drive a missed bit of old alignment that looks exactly like the road I was already on.<\/p>\n

If we weren’t all crazy, we would go insane.
\n    Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes,
\n    Jimmy Buffet, 1977<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was about to queue up a Trip Peek for today’s post when it occurred to me that a follow on to last week’s post on Hugh Donovan completing visits to all 3134 U.S. counties might be better. I had … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[59,57],"class_list":["post-9483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel","tag-maps","tag-statistics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1WE0S-2sX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9483"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9490,"href":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9483\/revisions\/9490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dennygibson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}