Besides the obvious “welcome to [state name]” sign. Is there a significant change in architecture, infrastructure, agriculture, store brands, maybe even culture?
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.
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.
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
Lol, river!
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.
I don’t know if it is still the case, but the border between Washington and Idaho went from motorcycle helmet law to no helmet law and when people drove from Seattle to Sturgis there would be a ditch full of motorcycle helmets just across the border into Idaho on I-90.
It’s usually on a highway and highways usually have a “Welcome to …” sign at the border.
The roads go to absolute shit crossing from Ohio into Indiana. And it’s not like we have exactly great roads here…
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.
Because they go through the door in the border wall to Mexico.
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 😁
I mean, thats kinda exactly what happens when you go from German highway to Czech highway
Everything just instantly gets yellow and dusty
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.
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.
Ah yes, CO to NM
It’s Nebraska.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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.
