Map at http://www.mob-rule.com/counties/bigmap.gif shows the combined tallies of counties visited by all members of mob-rule.com. Those with the lightest colors have had the fewest visitors, the blue and darker blue more, and the shades of red have had the most.

By Kevin Flynn
Inside-Lane.com

Are you a roadgeek? When you were growing up and taking family road trips, did you keep track of all the different state license plates that you passed, or stop for pictures at state border welcome signs?

Do you have a collection of shot glasses from every tourist town you’ve been to? A Mount Rushmore ash tray? A Yosemite spoon? A refrigerator magnet in the shape of Independence Hall? A Weeki Wachi Springs beer mug?

Do you follow transportation news because deep down, you just really like hitting the road?

If so, I’m taking the time today to show you how to have a little interactive fun with it all. Because I am, after all, a roadgeek.

A lot of folks keep track of their travels on maps on their walls or desk drawers. Push pins, colored pencils . . . my wife Harriet collects dirt – the most to be prized is dirt from each state’s Capitol lawn – to pin in little baggies on a wall map.

But to ardent travelers, bagging a state is no big deal. So these serious road-trippers collect counties. And thanks to the internet, there is a resource available for county counters to make their maps and compare them with fellow travelers.

Marty O’Brien of Santa Clara, Calif., put together his site at www.mob-rule.com where you can digitally mark off the counties you’ve bagged state-by-state – even use a Google Maps background to trace what counties you’ve crossed on an interstate or a U.S. highway.

In the U.S. there are 3,142 counties or similar units – in Louisiana they are parishes, in Alaska they are boroughs, and in Virginia you have a host of independent cities that count separately from the counties that surround them.

County counters look for borders signs to know that they've notched another one on their list.

Now what constitutes a clinched county visit? Well, don’t get me started. Such considerations have prompted long and heated debates. There are the purists, those who say that driving through, even getting out of the car to touch your feet to the ground, doesn’t count. You have to eat a meal there or, you know, leave a part of you behind. Some hold that you have to visit the county seat. I’m not that strict with my own counting. If I’ve driven through it, I count it.

But don’t even think about counting airport layovers!

If you want to join, sign up for an account and wait for approval. Then log in, go to each state you’ve visited and use your mouse clicks to toggle each county from “no” to “yes.”

That will enable you to generate your own digital U.S. map with your own color-coded visits on it.

Here is my map: