Very few Americans get the privilege of seeing more than a small part of the country in their lives, and I hope some day to be one of them, but for the moment I have to be satisfied with looking at pictures on the internet, talking to people from other states, and reading online tourism pamphlets. Still, there is value and adventure even in just looking at a photograph of a place you've never seen, that looks substantially different from your own experience.
Here then is the first part of a diary series presenting the Fifty States in beautiful imagery. While I realize a handful of images can't do a state justice, I've tried to pick photos that together capture the essence of a place as far as I know of it. I invite everyone to contribute your own images of where you live, even if outside the US (or on a non-state US territory), and feel free to offer factoids about your states.
First, here's an amusing game I ran into for learning where each state is in America. Even if you assume you know them by heart, you may be surprised by how many mistakes you make:
Play Games at AddictingGames
In the interest of surprise, I have fed the names of the fifty states into a list randomizer and approach them in randomly-generated order. I then combed Google for the most appealing, evocative, or distinguishing photos from a variety of contexts, in addition to showing each state's flag. Here are the first eighteen entries of that random list:
Connecticut
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Kansas
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Mississippi
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Hawaii
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Iowa
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Pennsylvania
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South Dakota
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Michigan
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Arizona
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North Carolina
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Utah
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Florida
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Arkansas
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Nevada
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New Hampshire
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Ohio
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Oklahoma
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Maine
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In the next part, I'll present sixteen more states from the random list. Hope you enjoyed this.