ADAMS CO., IN (WLIO) - Since 2017, one travel-loving couple has been on a mission - to visit every county in the United States. As of April 7th, 2024, they've met that goal. Our Katie Honigford spoke with that couple - her aunt and uncle - to hear about that long trip across the country.
When most people think about taking a trip, a widespread endeavor to make it to every county in the United States probably won't be on their radar.
But Jim and Dianne Smith like to go above and beyond.
After seeing an article about the Extra Miler Club, a group of people that have the goal to visit every county, the Smiths decided to take on the challenge themselves, starting seven years ago.
"The first trip we took was in August 2017 to go to Tennessee to see the total solar eclipse," said Jim. "We liked it, we enjoyed it, and decided that that would be our project that we would kind of endeavor on the next several years."
And as this journey started with an eclipse, it's now ending with one. They planned to visit their 3,144th county just in time for the total solar eclipse here in West Central Ohio.
"We kind of plugged away over the years, obviously there was a little bit of a detour as a result of COVID, but as we started getting closer to completing our project, we said, 'hey, we know that the eclipse is coming through Indiana and Ohio in April 2024, let’s make our last county that we were going to visit to be a county in this area,' so we picked Adams County, Indiana to be the last county that we were going to visit," said Jim.
Since the Extra Miler Club started recording people successfully making this trip, only 68 others have done it.
The Smiths say that there were some rules to this trip - they had to visit every county together and visit every state's capitol building. Some counties were a little harder to get to, including some in Alaska that could only be reached by plane or ferry, but any tricky spots on the trip were overshadowed by the fun sights and experiences they had.
"The thing that made this project interesting, is in an effort to visit every county, a vast majority of your travel is not on the interstate," Jim said. "You’re driving back roads, you’re going to all the little towns, you stop, you visit with people, you meet people in restaurants, bars, tourist spots, and it’s those interactions that made it all very interesting."
They're not quite done yet - they plan to finish their goal of reaching all 63 national parks on a trip coming up soon.
"Our last one is an American Samoa, and we’re going to be doing that in the next couple of weeks, we’re flying out there to do that," said Dianne.
After that's done, they haven't quite figured out what to do next... But as they say, the sky's the limit!
