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What little things do you tend to notice when you go through other states?
Me and my girlfriend just got back to Texas after spending a few days in South Carolina. I like to notice things like the appearance of street signs, and the different type of restaurant and store chains in that area.
I also noticed that every state we went through really stressed the importance of trees, even in the big cities we passed through like Shreveport, Jackson, Birmingham, and Atlanta. I get that Interstates can boost economies by bringing more traffic through, but the Metroplex takes advantage of it - building shopping center after shopping center, parking lot after parking lot. And I really hate how all of these big suburbs of Dallas just have an Interstate and a bunch of shopping centers to "distinguish" them.
Different accents. The fact that fashion tends to look a few years behind Californian fashion. Different fast food and supermarket chains. And from what I noticed. Most of the street signs in other US cities tend to be green. In the LA area. There is a ton of street sign colors because of the many different municipalities here. But in the other US cities I've been to. The street signs are a homogeneous green.
That nothing looks different when you cross the state line.
Even the clocks don't change. There are only five state lines that entirely match a time zone boundary: CA/AZ, NV/UT, NV/ID, AL/GA, and the very tiny border of NM/OK. By far, the majority of US time zone lines run through states, not between them.
Billboards. We don't have very many of them and it is a shock to drive through some states where the side of the road is huge billboard after billboard. Particularly the change from the west coast to Florida when we would visit the in-laws.
The changes in climate, geography and vegetation (although, if you drive 250 miles from the Oregon coast to the Oregon high desert you see more striking change than you see driving across entire states).
It doesn't matter how far you are from the state line, it still feels completely foreign since you're in a different state. I could be from Oxford, North Carolina standing in Clarksville, Virginia and still feel like I'm in a different world. That's probably just me, though.
I notice the way different states put together their big green highway signs first. Do they use the standard FHWA or Clearview font? Thick or thin font? Are the signs extruded-panel or increment-panel construction? Do individual signs tend to be posted on the side of the highway, or overhead on a gantry? These are the things that I immediately notice. I also notice eventually if a state prefers to build its highways with asphalt or concrete.
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