August 29, 2025
Several years ago I filled out one of those online forms that fills in a map with all the countries or states you've been to. Looking through my images folder I don't have a copy of that, so I probably have an iframe or something embedded somewhere that's been dead for a decade.
After a couple vacations, I've decided to make new ones. I used MapChart for this, because that was the first site in the search results. My criterion for visiting a place was that I had to be outdoors at some point. If I was in the airport for a transfer that doesn't count. So Washington (SEATAC) isn't on my US map and Colombia (El Dorado) isn't on my world map.
United States: This should be roughly the same as before, with the possible new addition of New Hampshire. I flew up there for a client visit back about 2009, so that may be after the last time I did this. I don't think I've ever been to Texas or Oklahoma, but one of the summer trips with the scout troop many years ago took a swing pretty far into the southwest. We might have taken US-34 to get back to Ohio, which would have taken us through north Texas and the Oklahoma panhandle. But if we took a different route (maybe I-25 up to I-70) we would have missed them. If I remember the next time I'm back home I'll ask Dad, but for now I'm leaving them off.
World: This was mostly stagnant for quite a while because I didn't want to leave the dog alone for too long, especially as she got up in years. Since the last time I did this I've tripled my country count. I could also theoretically include China here, since I've been to Hong Kong, but when I was there (before the 1997 handover) it wasn't part of China. So on the one hand I've been to (something that is now) China, but on the other hand I've never been to a place while it was in China.
