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It feels like traffic instantly doubles after you cross the California border, but that could just be me. The Palm trees are also noticeably different in Cali.
Welcome to Michigan. Come buy some cannabis. Signs every where
I used to live near Cincinnati. You don't go to Kentucky by accident. The largest tributary of the Mississippi was in the way and all thats waiting for you is Kentucky. Also the traffic sucked
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‘ve only been once to the US but do you by any chance mean California - Arizona?
The Colorado River is nowhere near as wide as the Mississippi.
Cincinnati?
As soon as you get out of Pennsylvania you see a marijuana store. Regardless of which state you're going into.
As soon as you set foot in Pennsylvania there's a fireworks store
Obviously pot is more dangerous than Uncle Teddy shooting fireworks off the back of his truck next to all the young children in the family
I cross a river and my first emotion is usually eww.
PA -> NJ
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.
Drove from ohio to the PNW and yeah you've got some state boundaries that are minor like ohio-indiana (but even then there's a vibe shift between bumfuck ohio and bumfuck indiana). But Illinois is very different. Once you cross the Mississippi it's a whole lot of nothing but corn in Iowa. Minnesota was a beautiful detour and a much needed respite between Iowa and south Dakota.
Ohio is weird, it's Midwestern farms, great lakes, the ohio river valley, and Appalachian foothills. So there's more difference between Columbus and Cleveland than between Cleveland and Michigan. But going south you cross the ohio and the valley opens into a more mountainous terrain rather than the flatness of ohio. Similarly west Virginia is a river then suddenly mountains. Pennsylvania just feels different (tbh the ohio-Pennsylvania border is out of the way unless you live in Cleveland or have frequent reason to drive to the east coast)
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.
Sounds a lot like how all borders of Latvia felt like just five years ago or so. A lot of the maps they use for any planning work have just plain white colour outside the borders, so after the last village there's just the border, and then... nothing.
So, once you were beyond the last village inside Latvia, there was of course no point in properly maintaining the roads. You are sitting in a bus, somewhat slumbering. Suddenly the ride becomes very uneven and you look through the window to see commas over and under half of the consonants in viļļaģe ņames :) (plus a lot of That only lasts for about five minutes, though.
And the same when exiting Latvia: bumpy road for five minutes, then the bumpiness ends and the villäges are pülling öff shenänigäns with double dots, or, alternatively, there's suddenly a lot of poop ųndęrnęąth lęttęrs. (Okay, in reality a Lithuanian letter only knows how to poop when in the beginning or end of a word)
It's a clever way to say "welcome to our co-o-o-ountr-r-r-r-r-y"! Boringly, some years ago that feature was removed, but I expect things to normalize in 10 years time. Estonia and Lithuania will maintain their roads also at the borders, but Latvia only in the relevant parts of the country, not at the outer limit of existence. Until the condition of the road to nowhere gets too ridiculous and they have to – exceptionally and begrudgingly – repair even those unnecessary pieces of road.
(And yes, this did also apply to the transcontinental road used by trucks going from Finland to Poland and Germany and further to, well, anywhere.)
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.
From the US to Canada, suddenly the signs are written in French (and Chinese too in Toronto airport).
Mexico, the signs are written in Spanish.
Yeah, that's what I notice
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.
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.
Don't forget weed! Happens with Wisconsin and basically every state that borders it.
The roads go to absolute shit crossing from Ohio into Indiana. And it's not like we have exactly great roads here...
Agreed, but indiana roads are so much louder too. Its kinda baffling.
Yeah, the roads instantly change color and texture. If you cross into south carolina, BAM. All the roads are whiter and rougher.
Yes! Texas/Colorado for sure, and Texas/Louisiana IIRC are noticable changes, but I can't remember if the change happens right at the border or not. Texas is big enough that we get different road types in different regions, like different asphalts near the coast vs the desert, or sometimes per county too. In retrospect it's super obvious. Awesome comment 😁
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.
Yeah most often the road gets worse /better, either because one state does a better job with road maintenance, or they're just on different schedules.
Also sometimes the signage for state routes changes slightly.
Because they go through the door in the border wall to Mexico.
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 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.
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.
Even Asheville roads, post hurricane, are at this point way better then SC roads. Not saying we're spending wisely, though. I sure wish DOT wasn't just a highway/stroad development department.
It's usually on a highway and highways usually have a "Welcome to …" sign at the border.
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.
