Borderlands

While traversing America’s highways, it’s interesting to watch the signs when you leave one U.S. state and enter another. Some states offer billboards and welcome stations, making a huge production out of the fact that you’re now within their sacred borders. Others display only a tiny “state line” sign that you might miss if you’re not paying attention. Here are ten U.S. state pairs that may or may not lie next to one another. Can you identify whether or not these states share a common border?

mental_floss Blog » The 5pm Quiz

8 thoughts on “Borderlands”

  1. 9 out of 10. I missed Maine/Vermont, the only states in the quiz I haven’t visited. I think I did pretty well for an ignorant American. Just doing my bit to raise the average score a little. Somebody has to do it.

  2. I’ve been in all 50 states and I missed two of the ten. As one of the nuns in high school used to say, “Care-less-ness.”

  3. The sad thing is, I’ve been in Maine & Vermont, and I thought that one was possible. Oh, well. 7 out of ten.

  5. I got nine out of ten but that’s beside the point, which is: the “leaving/entering” combinations are all highly likely. Of course you’d want to leave Indiana for Wisconsin, even if it’s not possible. If you lived in Mississippi, why wouldn’t you dream of being only one border away from Florida?

    The thing I wonder about is, given that the journeys involved are all from relatively regretable places to relatively better places, how does the New Mexico/Oklahoma thing work out. I mean, I haven’t spent much time in New Mexico, since there’s no spring training there, but I have spent time in Oklahoma, where both my sister and some in-laws lived before they executed their escape plans.

    My question is: is New Mexico really worse than Oklahoma? I understand I’m speaking from my current residence in Kentucky, which would be the worst place in the country in every category were it not for Arkansas, so I lack a certain perspective. But seriously: is New Mexico really that bad?

  6. Your question Tom is perhaps best not answered at all, but I do notice when I travel to Oklahoma I see few New Mexico license plates. Here in the Land of Enchantment however, Oklahoma plates are a familiar sight.

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