Hike all the places: A very rough guide to completion.
The next two or three years will be lean ones, in terms of budget. I don't want to plan anything too extravagant until our massive debts go down and (maybe) I get a job. Even then, I can't go rushing about on several trips each year. I figure one family vacation per year, plus one or two small personal trips done as cheaply as possible, will be sustainable. Despite that limitation, I expect to reach my goal (at least one hike in all fifty states and ten provinces, plus whatever I manage to do during overseas trips) while I'm 40, i.e. before December 2023.
Because I'm a planner, a listmaker, and a nerd, I prepared a very rough breakdown of how I might achieve this goal. In my planning, with the exception of a possible trip to LA this fall, I declined to plan on visits to friends in other places -- there's no way to guarantee I'll even be talking to, say, Maggie in Ontario or Gary in Washington by the time I might make these trips; lately I have no luck actually making such plans, anyway, which is not to say that they won't happen, just that I'm not planning on them.
Current tally
Connecticut
Delaware
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
Texas
The rest of 2014
August: Family vacation to Vermont, plus a personal trip to scoop up Rhode Island. It's possible I may squeeze in Massachusetts as well, but if not, that will be easy to fit into my schedule during any of my monthly hikes.
September: Solo weekend trip to scoop up Maine and New Hampshire.
October: Solo trip to California, if I can find the money via Lego sales.
2015
May: Weekend road trip down to Virginia and Maryland -- the last of the super easy states.
Summer: Ontario and Quebec, though really this could be taken care of relatively easily at any subsequent date.
2016
May: Fly into Albuquerque for a week or so, collecting Arizona and Colorado.
Fall: Four-day road trip to score West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio.
2017
Spring: Fly into Las Vegas to collect Nevada and Utah.
Summer: Road trip or jet hop to add New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island.
2018
Spring: Fly into Oklahoma City, tally up Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas in a whirlwind of driving.
September: Fly into Portland and get Oregon and Washington in a quick weekend.
2019
Early spring: Fly into Atlanta and add Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and South Carolina.
Summer or fall: Fly into Chicago and tour Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan.
2020
Summer: Fly to Billings or Butte or something, do Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. Alternative: Do a serious backpacking trip in one of these states, collect the others later.
Late summer: Newfoundland and Labrador, by air or by protracted road trip.
2021
Spring: Fly to Minneapolis or Des Moines to tally up Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota. A lot of driving, but that region is a desert of alternative air access points.
Summer: Fly to Calgary or something to hike in the Canadian Rockies, collecting Alberta and British Columbia.
2022
Late spring or summer: Add Manitoba and Saskatchewan somehow. This is an alternate date to add North Dakota, as well.
By this point I fully expect to have gone on a family vacation to Hawaii, so I'll check it off here.
2023
Late winter: Fly to New Orleans or something to scoop up Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and (if I haven't done it already via family vacations) Florida.
Summer: Get to Alaska and maaaaaybe the Yukon.
By this point I hope I'll have gone on at least a handful of international trips, thereby adding (at a guess) Great Britain, Ireland, Iceland, Spain, France, Germany, maybe Australia, maybe New Zealand, the Bahamas, maybe Mexico (if it isn't a narcocapitalist dystopia beyond all repair), and so on.
I hope eventually to get around to the Canadian territories (Nunavut, Northwest Territories, and the Yukon) in one-off trips to the major parks, like Quttinirpaaq, Nahanni/Nááts'ihch'oh, and Vuntut/Ivvavik, maybe in my 40s or 50s. These trips would cost thousands of dollars, even if the economy doesn't continue to slide into the Parable of the Sower dystopia that seems to be in our future; therefore I'm not including them in my Hike All the Places goals.