Feb. 11 - Lisa's Musings From Every Day Life

Did you ever play the license plate game on a long trip when you were a kid?

Today, en route to Ann Arbor, I wish I'd been playing because I saw plates from Montana and Alaska. Do you know how hard it is to find those plates?

Especially if you're playing while driving up and down the East Coast -- which, as a kid, I spent a lot of time doing while my mom drove.

Spying a Montana plate reminded me of a couple years ago, when a friend and I passed the time playing this game while en route to a National Specialty dog show in Wisconsin.

We both agreed that it's easier to play this game in the Midwest (she played on the East Coast as well) because of all the semi's on the east-west highways.

That's of course, if trucks are an allowed vehicle while playing.

If you REALLY want to make it hard to get all of those states -- and the Canadian Provinces -- only allow cars and passenger trucks.

When you allow semi plates on the list, you can find a lot of unusual states -- like New Mexico and Texas and Washington State.

My friend and I also took a few detours through truck stops.

Hotels are also great plate finding spots and since were were staying in one, we added a few missing states when we arrived at our destination.

Not sure if this might be considered "cheating," but we made the rules ahead of time so it wasn't like we changed them along the way.

And despite all the admitted "extras" we allowed in our quest, one of the few plates we did not find was Montana.

It figures I'd find it today, several years later and less than 15 miles from home.

Maybe next time we should detour through Ann Arbor before we head out on our next great road trip this September.