“I’ve been everywhere, man. I’ve been everywhere, man. Crossed the deserts bare, man. I’ve breathed the mountain air, man. Of travel I’ve a-had my share, man.”
I cannot honestly say I’ve been everywhere. I haven’t even been as many places as Johnny Cash, but I’m pretty sure I am more well-traveled than the average American.
And there’s another wonderful traveling song, Little Feat’s “Willin’,” that I love, and I have been from Tucson to Tucumcari, Tehachapi to Tonopah.
There are so many places that most people will never see, places I had the opportunity to visit places from coast to coast and border to border. I’ve been to Canada twice, in 1967 and 1979, and although I’ve never been to Mexico, I was within a few hundred yards of the border in 2010.
I wanted to cross the Rio Grande into Nuevo Laredo, but it was a time when the drug wars were such a big deal that Americans were being discouraged from crossing the border into Mexico.
I’ve driven through Mineral, hitchhiked into Farmville long before Facebook existed and been all over the Old Dominion.
There are four states of the 50 that I’ve never visited, although I have been sitting in a plane of a runway in one of the four. I’ve never been to Alaska, Arkansas or Mississippi. When I was working in St. Louis in 1985, I had a flight to Waterloo, Iowa, that had a stop along the way in Madison, Wisc. I never got off the plane, so I don’t count myself as ever having been to Wisconsin.
One state I visited in 2018 that I never thought I could see was North Dakota. But we attended a wedding in Minnesota, and we were staying only about a hundred miles from Fargo.
I wasn’t about to miss the opportunity.
I will actually be adding to my list of foreigh countries before I make it to any other states. I have been to two countries in North America (USA and Canada), two in Central America and the Caribbean (Guatemala and Jamaica), two in Asia (China and South Korea) and eight in Europe (Austria, Switzerland, Italy, France, England, Netherlands, Germany and Greece for a total of 14).
I’ve also been to Polynesia in the South Pacific, but technically Tahiti and Moorea are part of France.
This Christmas we’re going on a Caribbean cruise and in addition to a third visit to Jamaica, I’ll see Grand Bahama and Haiti.
Sixteen.
Wow.
There are two I would like to add to my list, although I doubt I ever will.
Australia and New Zealand.
Then I might try to say I’ve been everywhere.