50 before 50

There are exactly 23 states and 4 U.S. territories standing between me and a promise I made more than thirty years ago.

Some days that feels impossible.

Some days it feels inevitable.

And most days, it feels like a conversation I’m still having with someone who isn’t here anymore.

When I was sixteen years old, I had barely seen the world.

I’d lived my entire life in Florida, and the only places I’d ever traveled outside of my home state were western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. If you want to get technical, we’d driven through Georgia, but I don’t think barreling down I-75 with your face buried in a book really counts as seeing a place.

Back then, my world was small.
Not because I wanted it to be.
Because that’s just how life was.

The first time I ever left Florida, I was nine years old.

My dad loaded up the car, and we drove what felt like forever to go camping in the Great Smoky Mountains, just outside the tiny town of Bryson City, North Carolina.

I remember almost everything about that trip. The smell of campfire smoke woven into every sweatshirt. Roasting marshmallows after the sun disappeared behind the mountains. Listening to my dad explain tomorrow’s adventure while staring into the fire. And nearly falling off a goddamn waterfall because my father wanted a really cool photograph.

Every time I tell that story, I say the same thing:

“I really wish I knew what happened to that picture.”

I can still see it in my head. I was wearing a puffy pink jacket. My auburn hair had already escaped the braid my dad attempted that morning. I was standing just a little too close to the edge while he searched for the perfect angle.

Looking back, I’m amazed either of us survived my childhood.

The next day we hiked to Clingmans Dome. Kuwohi.

If you’ve ever made that half-mile climb, you know that “half-mile” is one of the greatest lies ever told by the National Park Service. When you’re nine years old, carrying little legs up that steep paved trail, it feels closer to ten miles. As we climbed, my dad told me that on a clear day you could see seven states from the top.

Seven.

To a little girl whose entire universe fit inside the borders of Florida, that sounded magical. I remember looking out over what felt like forever and saying,

“I want to see all of them.”

Not just the seven. All fifty.

I don’t think my dad realized he had just planted a seed that would stay with me for the rest of my life.

By the time I turned sixteen… I still hadn’t gone very far. Then one opportunity changed everything. Because apparently sixteen-year-old AmberLee had absolutely no concept of stranger danger.

I climbed into the backseat of a Ford Taurus with two guys I’d never met, a girl who was more of an acquaintance than a close friend, and absolutely zero concern for the fact that this sounded like the opening scene of every true crime documentary ever made.

We drove to Boston.
To pick up two more people I’d never met.

That trip became the catalyst for so much of my life.
It wasn’t just the places we visited.
It was the conversations.
The late-night talks that only happen somewhere between mile markers and gas stations.
The kind of conversations that make you believe your whole life is still waiting for you.
Somewhere along that trip, I discovered that I shared a dream with one of these “strangers”.

Jerry.

We wanted to visit every single state in America. Not because we were collecting passport stamps. Not because social media would someday reward us for it. Because we were curious.

Because the world suddenly felt so much bigger than the one we’d grown up in.

So we made a deal. We would see all fifty states before we turned fifty years old. It sounded like forever away. When you’re sixteen, fifty isn’t an age.

It’s another galaxy.

Jerry died in our twentieth year on this rock. 1997. Before he died, we’d crossed ten states off our list together.

Georgia.
South Carolina.
North Carolina.
Tennessee.
Virginia.
Maryland.
New Jersey.
New York.
Connecticut.
Massachusetts.

At sixteen, it felt like we were unstoppable.

Then life happened. As it always does.

Dreams don’t usually die all at once.

They get buried.
Under jobs. Bills. Relationships. Children. Responsibilities. Grief. Fear. Comfort.

The belief that there will always be more time.

There wasn’t one moment where I consciously abandoned the dream.

I simply stopped feeding it.

Years turned into decades. Somewhere in those decades, I became a wife.
A mom.
A photographer.
A business owner.
A caretaker.
A daughter trying to make everyone proud.

Life wasn’t standing still. It was moving so fast that there wasn’t much room left for the girl who wanted to see all fifty states.

I wasn’t avoiding the dream.
I was surviving.
Building businesses.
Raising kids.
Paying bills.
Showing up for everyone who needed me.

And while I don’t regret any of those chapters, I do wish I’d remembered that taking care of myself wasn’t selfish.

That saying yes to an adventure didn’t mean I was saying no to the people I loved.

Dreams don’t always disappear because we stop wanting them.

Sometimes they simply wait their turn.
Sometimes I’d travel because work required it.
Sometimes because life took me somewhere unexpected.
Sometimes because I finally remembered the promise.

Slowly… The map began changing again.

Ohio.
Michigan.
Illinois.
Indiana.
Colorado.
Texas.
Oklahoma.
Arkansas.
Alabama.
Missouri.
Kansas.
West Virginia.
Mississippi.
Louisiana.
Arizona.
New Mexico.

Along the way, I made it back to Washington, D.C.

I didn’t sit on the lawn in front of the Lincoln Memorial at 3 a.m. like Jerry and I had in 1993, solving all of the world’s problems the way only teenagers can. But I did get to sit in the gallery and watch a session of the Senate, wander the National Mall, and realize how differently a place can feel depending on who you’re standing beside.

Puerto Rico found me during a season when I was convinced I’d reached the lowest point of my life.

Little did I know life still had a devastating one-two punch waiting for me.

Fifteen months apart, the Grim Reaper came for my Aunt Charly… and then my dad.

Grief has a strange way of becoming a timestamp.

I can’t always remember what year something happened, but I remember who was still alive when I was there.

Places become tied to people.
People become tied to memories.

And sometimes, revisiting a place reminds you just as much of who’s missing as it does of where you’ve been.

Today I’ve visited twenty-seven states.

Twenty-three remain.
Four U.S. territories.

Some days I look at that number and think, “Easy.”

Not easy financially.
Not easy logistically.

But possible. Very possible.

Twenty-three states in a little over a year?
That’s a challenge.
Not an impossibility.

Other days… I get angry.
Not at anyone else.
At myself.

I think about all the opportunities I said no to.

Trips I postponed.
Vacations I talked myself out of.

The years I spent believing work had to come first.
The years I convinced myself I’d travel “later.”

I mourn those years sometimes.

Not because they were bad years. So many of them were beautiful.

Living isn’t something you’re supposed to schedule.

Everything else is never finished. There is always another email. Another client. Another project. Another obligation.

If you wait until life calms down before you start living it… You’ll wait forever.

The funny thing is… I don’t actually care about collecting all fifty states because I want to say I did it. That’s never been the point.

I want stories.
I want roadside diners where the pie is homemade.
I want tiny bookstores that smell like old paper.
I want conversations with strangers I’ll never see again.
I want to stand in places that make me feel wonderfully insignificant.
I want to photograph light I’ve never seen before.
I want to hear accents that don’t sound like mine.
I want to eat food that doesn’t exist in Oklahoma.
I want to watch the sun come up in places that still surprise me.

Travel has never been about escaping my life.
It’s about expanding it.

Every place I’ve ever visited has left fingerprints on who I became.

North Carolina taught me wonder.
Boston taught me courage.
New Orleans reminded me that grief and joy can dance in the same room.
Arizona reminded me silence can be beautiful.
New Mexico showed me colors I still can’t fully explain.

Every state changes you a little. If you let it.

When my dad told nine-year-old me that you could see seven states from the top of Kuwohi, he wasn’t just pointing toward a view. He was pointing toward possibility.

When Jerry made that ridiculous promise with me at sixteen, neither of us knew life would unfold the way it did. He never got the chance to finish our list.

I still can.

Maybe that’s why this matters so much. This isn’t just my challenge.

It’s ours.

I turn fifty on September 27, 2027.

The countdown has officially begun.

Twenty-three states.
Four territories.

One promise that’s been waiting more than three decades. Will I make it?

Honestly… I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe I’ll come up one state short. Maybe I’ll miss it entirely.

But here’s what I know for certain, I’m done waiting for “someday.” Because the older I get, the more I realize the goal was never really fifty states. The goal was becoming the kind of person who says yes to the road.

Who chases curiosity.
Who chooses experiences over excuses.
Who understands that life isn’t measured by how many years we were given, but by how willing we were to keep saying yes to what called us.

Twenty-three states.
Four territories.
Four hundred and something days.

Let’s see where the road takes me.

If you’ve got a favorite place in one of the states I haven’t visited yet, tell me.

I have a map to finish.

** About the Author:

AmberLee Fuller writes emotionally messy love stories about broken people finding their way home. She’s also an internationally published photographer, branding strategist, and firm believer that the best conversations happen over coffee road trips, and really good books. Her debut novel, Anatomy of Release, is the first book in The Echo Effect. She lives in Oklahoma with her rescue put bull, Sir Charles the Brave.