Ask Lemmy

I grew up in Illinois, about an hour northwest of Chicago. As soon as you cross into Wisconsin or Indiana there are fireworks stores EVERYWHERE! And as of a few years ago, Illinois has returned the favor with dispories on its side of the border.

Also as soon as you cross into Indiana, you're bombarded with billboards for "gentlemen's" clubs and ones saying "Hell is Real" and the like.

Crossing into Wisconsin, it never took long to leave the flatness of Illinois behind to have it replaced by the state's rolling hills. You'd also stop seeing businesses with "Chicagoland" in the name once you were north of the border. You do see that in parts of northwest Indiana though

I have to cross a bridge over one of the largest rivers in America.

I cross a river and my first emotion is usually eww.

PA -> NJ

As soon as you get out of Pennsylvania you see a marijuana store. Regardless of which state you're going into.

Not super stark, but travelling north from Alabama to the Tennesee/Alabama/Georgia triple point you get a lot of rocky outcrops and the terrain will tell you that you're in the Cumberland Foothills.

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 geographic 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.

Roads. It is pretty common around where I grew up to notice you are in a different states when there is a sudden shift in road conditions. They never communicated about when to do repairs or anything, so it was almost always an obvious line between either a really shit road and a smooth one, or vice versa. Sometimes you could even tell based on the noise or feel of the road, if the other state uses different road construction materials.

I can tell when I'm driving from NY into CT when suddenly there's traffic for no reason and everybody is driving like an asshat.

My crossing is a river, so basically pretty obvious. I was out of town on a work trip though and I was warned that when I was going to a Home Depot to not miss the turn because I would be at the Canada border and doing a U-turn there would probably get me chased down and pulled over.

Between States with more or less lax laws on liquor, firearms, explosives, tobacco, etc, there's usually various merchants immediately on the side of the border with more lax laws.

Canadian here, never crossed into the U.S nor seen the border but at some point in time I drove down 0 Avenue and saw a house with an American flag and my instinct was “That’s the wrong country chief” but I was far wrong.

Really put into perspective how “secure” our borders are.

Yeah, the roads instantly change color and texture. If you cross into south carolina, BAM. All the roads are whiter and rougher.

The roads go to absolute shit crossing from Ohio into Indiana. And it's not like we have exactly great roads here...

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.

Because they go through the door in the border wall to Mexico.

I can sometimes tell what county (not country) I am in from differences in the design of street signs (mostly the street name signs at stop lights), changes to the look of highway overpasses, and whether or not Flock cameras outnumber people.

It's usually on a highway and highways usually have a "Welcome to …" sign at the border.

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.

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.

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.

My state has piss poor roads.

Every time I leave my state the roads are noticeably smoother and less noisy.

It’s very distinct and almost comical.

Heading west out of Connecticut into New York the most obvious difference is they don't trim tree branches over the road/power lines. It suddenly feels like you're driving through a tunnel of green. Its actually quite nice but those parts of nys must have a lot of outages after storms.

My state disallows billboard advertising, which I forget until I cross into another state and have to suffer through Jesus and injury lawyer ads.

I pay money to cross a large river.

I'll never forget driving home from college with some friends for the holidays one year. I was from PA, he was from Ohio and had never been more east. We were headed to NY with another friend and our route took us briefly through Jersey.

"How will we know we're there?" he asked as the car suddenly lurched and felt like we hit a gravel road despite ostensibly being a paved highway ...