Besides the obvious “welcome to [state name]” sign. Is there a significant change in architecture, infrastructure, agriculture, store brands, maybe even culture?
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.
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.
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.
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.
What about, “Something wrong? Call Ann Phong!”
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?
deleted by creator
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.
Also, the ad signs will alternate between adult toy stores and anti-abortion messages every few hundred feet.
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 most often the road gets worse /better, either because one state does a better job with road maintenance, or they’re just on different schedules.
Also sometimes the signage for state routes changes slightly.
Street signs in Wisconsin and Illinois differ
deleted by creator
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…
Yeah, the roads instantly change color and texture. If you cross into south carolina, BAM. All the roads are whiter and rougher.
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 😁
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.
deleted by creator
Don’t forget weed! Happens with Wisconsin and basically every state that borders it.
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”
I live on a border and my jogging path cuts through one state and then rounds back home to the other. The only way you can tell a difference is the states have different paving and road work schedules, so usually one state has more shitty roads then the other.
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
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)
