This year’s Moss Motoring Challenge has the same requirement of just 15 counties as last year and while there are still three other county names (Jackson, Franklin & Jefferson) out there that occur in around 25 states. Donna will have none of that foolishness this time around.
So I’ve cooked up a different bit of craziness for this year’s 15. Last year my reason for doing 15 with the same name, forcing us into a convoluted huge loop, was because we live in a fairly county rich environment and I wondered where the challenge was. I claimed that we could get 15 counties in day trip from home. Well by golly, that is just what we are going to attempt.
There are 6 in South Carolina (Aiken, Saluda, Edgefield, McCormick, Allendale & Barnwell) and 9 in Georgia (Lincoln, Wilkes, McDuffie, Columbia, Richmond, Jefferson, Burke, Jenkins & Screven) that can be run in a loop. We will cross the Savannah River twice, once on US378 and back on US301 and if we drive from county seat to county seat it will be around 370 miles according to Google maps. That mileage should take us 7.5 hours baseline. If we average 10 minutes per photo stop that adds another 2.5 hours. Now we are up to 10 hours and doesn’t include bathroom, gas or eating stops.
I’m hoping we can knock off at least 70 miles or so off that total by dropping the county seat thing and cutting some corners. Either way we will have to do this near the summer solstice to maximize our daylight hours.