The Maps

This blog started out as a quest to see more of the world between my 45th and 50th birthdays. It's become so much more than that as I've decided to continue it beyond that initial five year commitment. I thought when I started this thing that I needed a map or two to keep track of all the places I've been. I continue to believe that now and I love filling in another part of the globe each time I return from somwhere new. Rather than placing pinpoints on a map for all the cities I've visited or stayed in or something like that, I'm electing to color in countries (above) and states (below) to show my progress.

I realize this is a little imprecise. Yes, I only saw a small part of Germany on the first trip after I started this blog but I'm taking credit for the entire country anyway. Similarly for my first trip to sub-Saharan Africa in 2015, where I visited four countries but traveled a total of maybe 40 miles as the crow flies from start to finish. If folks out there can't deal with that, they are just going to have to let it go. At least I'm breaking down the USA into smaller chunks by showing a states map.

The maps are going to show places I have blogged about in this journey, not all the places I've been since I started writing on my 45th birthday. That's why Connecticut (where I grew up) is not colored in on the USA map and why the Vatican City, which I visited in 2015, is not filled in on the world map, not that you would be able to see that anyway at this scale. Just explaining, that's all.

The running list, by country (organized by continent) and state, is below.

Africa
Botswana, Kenya, Morocco, Namibia, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Asia
Cambodia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore

Europe

Austria, Croatia, Czechia, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, United Kingdom

Oceania
New Zealand

North America

The Bahamas, Canada, Costa Rica, Mexico, USA 

South America
Ecuador, Peru

The States map of my home country is below. The running list here is:

Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wyoming