Besides the obvious “welcome to [state name]” sign. Is there a significant change in architecture, infrastructure, agriculture, store brands, maybe even culture?
My state has piss poor roads.
Every time I leave my state the roads are noticeably smoother and less noisy.
It’s very distinct and almost comical.
I’m up in Canada and we have provinces here … I live in Ontario and in the year 2000 me and a friend took a motorcycle ride across Canada to the west coast. Great trip.
But for motorcycle riders in Ontario, especially northern Ontario, its famous for rain during the summer, especially when you want to go riding. Sure enough in the first week of July that we started our trip, trying to make sure to catch the best weather for riding, we rode through rain for about three days as we drove through northern Ontario.
The funniest thing was … as soon as we crossed the Ontario/Manitoba border, the skies parted and I could literally see dark clouds over Ontario and bright clear summer skies to the west … right at the border of the two provinces.
We had great weather the rest of the trip! … and sure enough when we did the return trip, we were rained on again in northern Ontario!
I had that driving into a new county by the coastline. Right at the county line it was like a sheet of rain pulled across the road.
michigan?
I plead the 5th.
Let me guess, South Carolina? Been through there twice, and the change was jarring and immediately noticeable crossing into Georgia or NC.
Lmao I was driving about 16 hours solo to get back to Michigan. Legitimately immediately after crossing the Ohio to Michigan border, the road contrast was so incredibly stark lol. Immediate potholes everywhere.
My state disallows billboard advertising, which I forget until I cross into another state and have to suffer through Jesus and injury lawyer ads.
One of the many great things about Vermont
Never been, but I’ve heard it’s lovely.
Not the easiest place to get to, but it sure is beautiful
Vermont? I remember that that’s a thing there.
In CA there’s this injury lawyer who has billboards all over highway 101 from San Francisco to San Diego. Hundreds of billboards. His name on the billboards is Sweet James and he has a pony tail. Sweet James. I don’t know how a lawyer could become so seemingly popular while using that name.
I couldn’t believe driving through Missouri. What a shit hole.
I never saw these personally, but ten years ago in Matt Gaetz’s district a shelter ran billboards with “She’s your daughter, not your date”. Yikes.
Why is it always lawyers?
I saw one that was just a photo of an eye and a phone number. I wasn’t from the area, so it was driving me nuts wondering what it meant. Didn’t take long driving through the area to learn that this lawyer has so many different billboards up, that his eye alone has become recognizable.
That’s crazy! Hope he never gets a retina biometric lock on his door.
There must be a lot of money in injury law, but no nationally-known firms, so your choice is either a referral or their name bobbing out of your subconscious from driving past it every day.
Nope.
The main thing you’ll notice is a shit ton of stores for anything that’s not legal in one state, or taxed higher in one state.
The rest of the stuff mixes together along state lines and there’s no clear divide except for the legal/tax stuff.
Crossing into Wyoming from Utah is hilarious for this. Suddenly there’s porn, cigarettes, beer, fireworks, and more porn!
North Carolina paves its roads. South Carolina air drops its roads.
You know you have crossed into South Carolina when the suspension of your vehicle is torn out from under you.
I love that the Dutch talk the same way about the Belgian roads
Are the Belgian bricks uneven?
I don’t live in a state that borders SC, but I can think of no better answer to the question at hand.
Even Asheville roads, post hurricane, are at this point way better then SC roads. Not saying we’re spending wisely, though. I sure wish DOT wasn’t just a highway/stroad development department.
It still kills me we got a hurricane in the mountains.
Major roads have a “welcome to wherever” sign but minor ones won’t. They’re always a clear delineation in the pavement, though, because neither state is going to pave one single molecule of distance further than they have to. And they never seem to be able to arrange it so that there isn’t a noticeable bump at the junction.
One of my neighboring states also has some kind of pathological aversion to putting complete and legible signs for the names of roads at intersections, too. So the disappearance of all useful street signs is therefore usually also a clue.
field on one side, field on the other. if I am on the interstate, the surface gets really shitty on our side because brownback and the republicans in topeka drained the highway fund to give the koch bros and fat corpo-farmers a tax break.
When you pass into Indiana, you’re immediately overcome with this opressive sense of forboding and despair. Also the roads immediately turn to shit.
Street signs in Wisconsin and Illinois differ
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The other big thing for knowing I’m in Illinois is seeing gasoline and diesel prices significantly higher than in my state. It’s not just fossil fuels either, charging my EV in Illinois makes it cost more than fueling my wife’s SUV in my state and driving the same trip. The roads aren’t much better either for the higher taxes either.
And toll roads…
You have to go across the biggest river around.
Delaware makes you pay to leave New Jersey
You gotta pay to leave NJ regardless of which way you go which I think is funny. Makes me think of a Bronx tale; “now youse can’t leave”
Connecticut is making a bold claim here to anyone leaving NY
Yeah I would hardly call Ned Lamont a governor.
Mayor of the town of Connecticut.
He legalized weed at least
My southern neighbor:
I’ve lived near the Mason Dixon line for my whole life and you know when you get to Maryland because the roads aren’t covered with potholes and/or construction.
The same goes for the Netherlands and Belgium. Or at least it used to be, I haven’t been to belgium in years.
There are 50 states and a lot of different border arrangements. If a border is something dramatic like a river and you know that’s the state border you can tell.
Often the only way to tell is a change in road surface or signage, or the “Welcome to state” sign. Google navigation will tell you too.
Yeah, the roads instantly change color and texture. If you cross into south carolina, BAM. All the roads are whiter and rougher.
I mean, thats kinda exactly what happens when you go from German highway to Czech highway
Everything just instantly gets yellow and dusty
Yes! Texas/Colorado for sure, and Texas/Louisiana IIRC are noticable changes, but I can’t remember if the change happens right at the border or not. Texas is big enough that we get different road types in different regions, like different asphalts near the coast vs the desert, or sometimes per county too. In retrospect it’s super obvious. Awesome comment 😁
Something that surprised me in my travels (which are primarily West of the Mississippi) is how often the states actually line up with a significant geologic shift. Arizona is endless orange desert. New Mexico immediately becomes rainbow painted cliffs. Utah is somehow entirely vertical. California is a contradiction of green desert. Nevada is like a chemical mine puked on a bunch of bumpy ridges. Northern New Mexico falls off a cliff and the bottom is Texas.
If you watch closely, usually something fairly dramatic happens in the landscape within a few miles of the border.
Drove from ohio to the PNW and yeah you’ve got some state boundaries that are minor like ohio-indiana (but even then there’s a vibe shift between bumfuck ohio and bumfuck indiana). But Illinois is very different. Once you cross the Mississippi it’s a whole lot of nothing but corn in Iowa. Minnesota was a beautiful detour and a much needed respite between Iowa and south Dakota.
Ohio is weird, it’s Midwestern farms, great lakes, the ohio river valley, and Appalachian foothills. So there’s more difference between Columbus and Cleveland than between Cleveland and Michigan. But going south you cross the ohio and the valley opens into a more mountainous terrain rather than the flatness of ohio. Similarly west Virginia is a river then suddenly mountains. Pennsylvania just feels different (tbh the ohio-Pennsylvania border is out of the way unless you live in Cleveland or have frequent reason to drive to the east coast)
