Is visiting every state on your bucket list? What about every major landmark?
When Tracy Staedter at Discovery News saw a map going around Facebook claiming -- but failing -- to hit all the major landmarks in the U.S., she saw a challenge.
She contacted Randy Olson, a doctoral student at Michigan State, and asked him to compute one of the most complicated road trips ever. (Olson previously computed the optimal search pattern for finding Waldo in all the Where's Waldo puzzles.)
The "optimized" road trip hits all 48 contiguous states (sorry Hawaii and Alaska), and includes 50 stops at National Natural Landmarks, National Historic Sites, National Parks, and National Monuments. There are two stops in California, and one in D.C. -- plus the other 47 states -- to get to 50.
"If you’ve ever used Google Maps to get the directions between two addresses, that’s basically what we had to do here," wrote Olson, in an explanation of the route. "Except this time, we needed to look up 2,500 directions to get the 'true' distance between all 50 landmarks."
These are the landmarks:
Grand Canyon, Arizona
Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah
Craters of the Moon, Idaho
Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
Pikes Peak, Colorado
Carlsbad Caverns National Park, New Mexico
The Alamo, Texas
The Platt Historic District, Oklahoma
Toltec Mounds, Arkansas
Elvis Presley’s Graceland, Tennessee
Vicksburg National Military Park, Mississippi
French Quarter, New Orleans, Lousiana
USS Alabama, Alabama
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida
Okefenokee Swamp Park, Georgia
Fort Sumter National Monument, South Carolina
Lost World Caverns, West Virginia
Wright Brothers National Memorial Visitor Center, North Carolina
Mount Vernon, Virginia
White House, Washington, D.C.
Colonial Annapolis Historic District, Maryland
New Castle Historic District, Delaware
Cape May Historic District, New Jersey
Liberty Bell, Pennsylvania
Statue of Liberty, New York
The Mark Twain House & Museum, Connecticut
The Breakers, Rhode Island
USS Constitution, Massachusetts
Acadia National Park, Maine
Mount Washington Hotel, New Hampshire
Shelburne Farms, Vermont
Fox Theater, Detroit, Michigan
Spring Grove Cemetery, Ohio
Mammoth Cave National Park, Kentucky
West Baden Springs Hotel, Indiana
Abraham Lincoln’s Home, Illinois
Gateway Arch, Missouri
C. W. Parker Carousel Museum, Kansas
Terrace Hill Governor’s Mansion, Iowa
Taliesin, Wisconsin
Fort Snelling, Minnesota
Ashfall Fossil Bed, Nebraska
Mount Rushmore, South Dakota
Fort Union Trading Post, North Dakota
Glacier National Park, Montana
Hanford Site, Washington
Columbia River Highway, Oregon
San Francisco Cable Cars, California
San Andreas Fault, California
Hoover Dam, Nevada
And this is the route:
Olson said that "assuming no traffic" (he's got a sense of humor), the road trip would take approximately 224 hours of driving. He estimates it would take two to three months to complete it.
"What’s great is that you start in any state and as long as you follow the path, you’ll be driving the best route," wrote Staedter.
Olson also computed a route hitting popular cities in all the contiguous states.