"Have you been to all 50?" is a question most Americans can answer with a shrug. The real number is usually higher than people guess, because the states you drove through at night, or flew into once for a wedding, are easy to forget.

Here is a simple way to count, and a few rules worth deciding first.

Settle the rules before you count

People count states in very different ways, so pick yours and keep it:

  • Driving through. Many people count a state if they stopped there, even for gas. Others want a night or a meal.

  • Airports. A connecting flight usually does not count. Leaving the airport usually does.

  • Washington, DC. It is not a state, so most people track it separately from the 50.

Whatever you choose, the point is that your number means the same thing next year.

Go region by region

A list of 50 names is hard to remember against. Regions are easier. The US Census splits the states into four:

  • Northeast: 9 states, from Maine down to Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

  • Midwest: 12 states, from Ohio out to the Dakotas, Nebraska and Kansas.

  • South: 16 states, from Delaware and Maryland down to Florida and across to Texas.

  • West: 13 states, including Alaska and Hawaii.

Work through one region at a time and think about road trips, school trips, weddings and work travel. Neighboring states jog your memory.

Fill in a map

A map makes the gaps obvious. The free states visited map on stampsy.app lets you tap every state you have been to, adds them up out of 50, shows each region's count, and saves the map as an image. No sign-up.

Check your photos

If you are not sure about a state, your camera roll probably knows. Most phone photos keep the place and date they were taken. Scroll back to a trip and the location will settle it.

That is also how the Stampsy app works: it reads only the place and date of each photo, on your phone, and finds the countries you have been to. US states fill in the same way with Stampsy Pro.

Then pick the next one

Once you have your number, the map shows the gaps. For a lot of people the last few are the far-flung ones, like Alaska and Hawaii. Plan one in, and watch the count go up.