The Countdown Begins

Hi. My name is Joe and I'm from Philly. I spent most of my life within a 40 mile radius of this great city and I've been itching to see more. I used to count how many states I've been to until I went to the Hoover Dam in 2006 and went just a few feet into Arizona looking for parking. That's when I realized it is not fair to say I've visited Arizona and there had to be a better way to measure where I've been. Last year, I discovered a really great wall sized map of the USA that shows all of the counties and decided to start counting. There are 3,077 counties in the US and I've been to less than 8% of them.

In 2007, this new obsession influenced where I went camping. In August, my buddies and I drove to central PA to camp just north of Williamsport (which secured me 7 new counties) then in October, we drove down to Anderson, SC for a four day weekend (which secured 3 new states and over 40 new counties).

Now, I am about to embark on a cross-country road trip inspired by my father who drove to California on parts of Route 66 back in the early 60s shortly escaping communist Hungary and moving to America. I never got to do this after high school or college, since I was always working full-time and could not afford to do this. Now, I have almost a month of vacation time saved up at work and credit card that is saying "go experience America", so I'm driving to Chicago to follow whats left of the historic Mother Road Route 66 to California.