So I’m a guy who likes checking things off lists. I know that’s not how everyone operates, but it’s what I enjoy. It’s the reason why my travel bucket list includes things like
- Visit every state in the United States
- Drive on every Interstate
- Jump in all 5 Great Lakes in one day – COMPLETED in August 2012 (YouTube video)
- Visit every subway station on the New York City subway
- Visit every county in the United States (I’m about 40% done – see map)
Here’s my county map (colored by year of visit)
I don’t pretend to think that all people like to travel like this, but on the other hand, I know that I am not alone – see also the Extra Miler Club, whose motto is “The shortest distance between two points is no fun”.
The other day, someone pointed me towards the website Most Traveled People.
“Counting” where you’ve been
I think that for as long as people have been dividing up land, people have been tracking “how much” they’ve been to. The first such group that I am aware of was the Traveler’s Century Club, which was first formed in 1954.
(SEE ALSO: What’s the best site to track your flights?)
Then, there is always the age-old question of if you’re going to visit every country, well then… what counts as a country? The TCC has a list of 321 “countries”, which separates territories that are far removed from their “official” political home (such as Easter Island, Chile, or Guam, USA, or Madeira, Portugal). There is also the UN list, which counts 193 countries. The Wikipedia, as always, has you covered!
List of territories according to MTP
Most Traveled People goes the other way, to the extreme. They count the 50 US states, as well as political subdivisions of Canada, Germany, Russia, Mexico, China and a few other countries, for a total of 875. Nobody has gotten to all of them – as of this writing Donald L Parrish leads the way with 840.
Personally my map is pretty weak sauce – I have 49.
That’s 45 US States, 1 Canadian Province (Ontario), the Dominican Republic and the German state of Hesse. Most Traveled People also lets you track your UN countries visited as well as your visits to World Heritage Sites
(SEE ALSO: Tracking UNESCO World Heritage Sites)
My unique problem
I have a “problem” in that I was born in Wiesbaden, Germany (my father was in the US Army serving there at the time). In the 2 years I was there, I know that I visited many places with my mom and dad in Europe, though of course I don’t remember. I have not yet decided if or how to count those in this regard. For tracking my US counties visited, I have chosen to track counties visited with my parents before I remember them (like the county of Queens, New York, where I flew into JFK from Germany as a toddler, right before the airport was shut down for the Blizzard of ’78). What do you guys think?
I love hearing about other people’s travels and “measuring up” – if you have a MTP account, share your count in the comments below!
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
Must be something in the air: I just published a very similar blog post about travel maps and measuring travel last week: http://sharetraveler.com/travel-map/
Awesome! I just read your post – you’re much more world traveled than I am!
I only count the places I have traveled to since I turned 18. For the most part, there aren’t many places that I would add to the list if I included places I traveled before I was 18, and the ones that I can think of off the top of my head (Hawaii, New Mexico, Spain), I fully intend to go back to.
p.s. what do you use to track the counties you’ve traveled to?
The site for tracking counties is mob-rule.com/counties.
Personally, I count places that I have some recollection of, so places I visited as an infant wouldn’t count for me. But if I were counting counties I would probably go ahead and count ones I went to as a very small child because it sounds like more of a checklist because it’s more about setting foot in the county than the actual experience of visiting the place (like going to a different country would be).
Does that make sense?
Yeah that makes sense. For me, a lot of times the “checklist” style of things really is just about checking things off of a list, so maybe you’re right that I should count those. The tricky part is going to be trying to get my parents to remember what trips we took (and the routes we took!) :-).
I do agree with some of the other commenters that traveling to experience a place is also very good, and there are times that I travel for that as well. In that case, I would like to go back to many of those places in Europe that I “visited” as an infant / toddler.
I count what I remember doing, but my family did not travel much and I remember what little we did. Plus, I have traveled back to those places again as an adult.
I’d also like to visit all 50 states, and I have 12 left to visit. I also want to visit all of the Hall of Fames for the major sports (at least what I can consider major – guess I should add futbol to that list, huh). My husband has visited all of them, but I need to visit the Golf Hall of Fame to finish that checklist.
Right now, I have a 5 continents, 5 years goal (I have already visited North America and Europe). First up this year – Asia!
My reasoning is that people often mention the place they were born and cities they lived in, even as a small child, when saying where they’re from. If those places count, then the places you traveled to as a kid should count too. Also, fan of MTP…kind of strange but I especially like the “your peers” section:/
Yeah – I guess I’ll have to talk to my mom and figure some stuff out!
I’m kind of in the same boat as Ms. M. I count whatever I could remember and I didn’t go that far afield as a kid. Most, but not quite all, the counties I visited as a kid have been revisited as an adult. I’d visited all the counties of Utah by the time I was 10 or 11 and was aware of having done so at that point. One or two of them I don’t believe I’ve revisited since.
I’ve had a much tougher time defining what it means to have “lived” somewhere. I could have a fairly wide range of numbers for that depending on definition.