As soon as you get out of Pennsylvania you see a marijuana store. Regardless of which state you’re going into.

Something that surprised me in my travels (which are primarily West of the Mississippi) is how often the states actually line up with a significant geologic shift. Arizona is endless orange desert. New Mexico immediately becomes rainbow painted cliffs. Utah is somehow entirely vertical. California is a contradiction of green desert. Nevada is like a chemical mine puked on a bunch of bumpy ridges. Northern New Mexico falls off a cliff and the bottom is Texas.

If you watch closely, usually something fairly dramatic happens in the landscape within a few miles of the border.

Roads. It is pretty common around where I grew up to notice you are in a different states when there is a sudden shift in road conditions. They never communicated about when to do repairs or anything, so it was almost always an obvious line between either a really shit road and a smooth one, or vice versa. Sometimes you could even tell based on the noise or feel of the road, if the other state uses different road construction materials.

I have to cross a bridge over one of the largest rivers in America.

I travel a lot throughout the US, and sometimes the changes are obvious while other times I can be driving and not entirely sure which state I’m in just from looking around on the highway. As others have said while driving on a major highway a clue can be a huge store full of items like fireworks just across the border from a state they aren’t legal in.

The geography and environment can certainly be a big clue. Driving through West Virginia there are tunnels through large mountains, Pennsylvania around the Pittsburgh area has steel bridges, Louisiana has highways raised up from the muck, there are mountains that the highways wind around in North Carolina that give way to pretty flat highways as you go south. Kentucky has long depressing stretches of straight boring road. I’ve noticed even traffic patterns can say things as Georgia highways always have a higher number of semitrucks than anywhere else for example. Nevada is flat and open but as you go into Utah it gets windy and rocky, and cell signal usually goes out for a bit.

Staying in different states I notice alcohol sales rules are different. In some states you basically don’t see any alcohol outside of designated stores for it including no beer at gas stations, in other states you see beer for sale widely but hard liquor only at designated stores, and in other states hard liquor at WalMart is perfectly normal.

I’ve found on the whole that people are actually nicer than average in Utah. While coffee shops exist I have noticed in offices there is often a lack of a central coffee machine.

Louisiana everyone I deal with from there has a tendency to be much more relaxed than average about showing up exactly on time for things. Louisiana itself also has a cultural divide between the northern part which is more generic US south, and the southern part which has the more creole and tourist heavy atmosphere.

I honestly don’t mind Ohio. I know it’s an internet meme to hate it, but aside from their obsession with dumping chili on unrelated foods it’s decent. Has a strong blue collar streak kind of like Pennsylvania culture.

Texas has a big cowboy influence and they don’t let you not know it. The roads tend to big big and wide which is great, except the freeways especially in Dallas can become confusing multilevel nightmares.

California has lots of Spanish signs, lots of first generation Mexicans who bring culture with them. Lots of for example Mexican super markets. Californians have a culture of going FAST on freeways if there isn’t gridlock traffic, in some cases going 100mph just barely keeps you up with traffic.

North Carolina paves its roads. South Carolina air drops its roads.

You know you have crossed into South Carolina when the suspension of your vehicle is torn out from under you.

I knew a family who’s house was in New York and the backyard was in New Jersey. No, you couldn’t tell.

My state has piss poor roads.

Every time I leave my state the roads are noticeably smoother and less noisy.

It’s very distinct and almost comical.

One comment mentioned that some things are legal in one state but illegal in another.
And I also remember that laws in general are often quite different between states.

So, I am wondering if there exist some kind of controls near state borders to catch illegal stuff and practices (or even wanted persons?) crossing the border?