Brown counties are places I got to before or during college, or during my move to Lawrence, Kansas in 1991.
Purple counties are from the time I lived in Lawrence, 1991 - 1996.
Red counties are from the three years I lived in Emporia, Kansas, 1996 - 1999.
Blue counties are places I went between moving to Portland in 1999 and getting married in 2003.
Green counties are places first visited between August 2003 and the present. The latest additions are from a sprawling 4150-mile loop from Portland to Denver, to Death Valley, and home, catching 24 new counties along the way.
Why? Reasonable question. To a certain extent, just an unusual version of the normal urge to collect and to keep track of things. Some people collect stamps or coins or wine or baseball cards; I collect counties. But the more important thing is the way it encourages travel off of the beaten path, out of ruts, and into places and regions that you wouldn't have thought to visit otherwise. I like that.
Does anybody else do this? Surprisingly, yes. For one thing, my wife does. But there's actually a small national organization, the Extra Miler Club. And there's a surprising number of people who do even more esoteric forms of arbitrary travel, such as going to the high point in every county, or trying to reach all places where three state lines come together.
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