Google Maps Challenge! -- USA

[Gary]

Hi all,
Been awhile, but stumbled back into the forum and found this challenge from Mark. Give me a day or 2 and I'll find the most efficient route. It's who I am and what I do. See ya soon.

Gary 50 states in 8 days , 20 minutes

[Mark Sedenquist]

Gary:50 states in 8 days , 20 minutes

Gary, it's great to see you back here -- the original site was taken down -- is there a new one that we can link to for that original amazing trip?

Mark

[Gary]

Hi Mark,
That site was set up by my son on a Univ of Maine at Farmington Server ( where he was attending at the time) and evidently was taken down after he left. I know I have all the original web pages somewhere , so that I can re create it at some point..

I found a couple of glitches with the maps that have been done for the 48 state capitol challenge.

Concord is the state capitol of New Hampshire
Annapolis is the State capitol of Maryland
Jefferson City is the state capitol of Missouri

Florida was left out of the map, Tallahassee is the state capitol.

This was driving me a little crazy since I plugged in all the capitols to street and trips and could only get to 12, 500 miles or so.

Did a little comparison and found these differences.

Street and trips will allow all 48 state capitols to be mapped on one map.

Ok back to work, see ya soon

Gary

[Midwest Michael]

I see I got a little sloppy when I was recreating the maps. I had Tallahassee in my first attempts when I did it in 4 maps, plugging in some points and then manually moving the map for the rest. It looks like I slipped up a little when I rebuilt the maps into 2.

With the Corrected Versions using the same state order, East Half and West Half, I came up with a corrected total of 12,020.

I see a few ways that you could shorten the distances by taking US highways instead of the interstate, for example, between St. Paul and Pierre taking US-212 through Watertown, SD instead of going all the way down to I-90 would save 77 miles, bringing the total down to 11947. However, I don't see a way to improve the order in which the states would be visited.

[Mark Sedenquist]

I rarely "proof" any of Midwestern Michael's routes anymore, because usually he is more accurate than I am.... Guess I should have paid a little more attention eh? Great catch on both of you for the re-calibration as it were....

Mark

[ferrydreamer]

assuming you were to take MW Michael's route as "the holy grail" of road trips, at which point would you start and at which time of year to follow all the best weather/avoid the worst.

[PNW Judy]

The only thing that I can think of that might make timing an issue would be weather. So, if you're doing this trip over an extended period of time, you might want to travel the northern tier in the summer and the southern tier in the spring or fall, for example.

If someone is flying from out-of-country, then I would just get tickets to the city that has the cheapest flights from my country and start from there.

[glc]

I used Streets and Trips 2007, made the corrections to the missing and wrong capitals, and removed Washington DC. I used the generic location of each city.

Quickest route: 12007.0 miles, 191 hours 28 minutes.
Shortest route: 11573.0 miles, 215 hours 57 minutes.

I used Michael's order, Tallahassee goes between Atlanta and Montgomery.

Quickest
Shortest

Those are the two .est files for S&T.

EDIT: Respectfully request the management consider adding .est files to the permitted attachment types.

{Editor: We prefer that members convert .est file to .jpegs)

[Gary]

I think the group has done a fine job in refining the Holy grail. The Capitols trip is a far more difficult "traveling salesman" challenge then just hitting the states. In the meantime, I hope to do a training run this Sunday by hitting 22 states in one day. Only 3 capitols along the way. Wish me luck!

Gary

[Midwest Michael]

22 states in one day! That's very cool.

Obviously this has to be an Eastern trip, but which 22 states are you planning to hit in one day? Do you have a map or know how many miles you're talking about to do this?