License plate spotting has a way of turning an ordinary road trip into a hunt.
We recently took a family vacation through New Mexico and Colorado — Albuquerque → Santa Fe → Four Corners → Durango → Mesa Verde → Great Sand Dunes → Taos → Rio Grande Gorge → Albuquerque — and obviously, we were playing Spot the States along the way.
By the end of the trip, we’d found 45 of 51.
But the best part wasn’t the number. It was how we got there.
Albuquerque → Santa Fe
We flew into Albuquerque and stayed there for just one night before heading toward Santa Fe the following day via the Turquoise Trail.
The hunt started immediately.
We picked up plenty of the plates you’d expect to see in the Southwest — New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Arizona and others — and started building the board.
Along the Turquoise Trail we stopped at Tinkertown Museum.
Technically, we saw just about every license plate imaginable there.
Unfortunately, they were hanging on the wall.
Those don’t count.
Santa Fe → Four Corners → Durango
From Santa Fe, we headed northwest toward Four Corners.
Road-trip attractions are fantastic places to hunt plates because you’re drawing cars from all over the country, and Four Corners didn’t disappoint.
We added several states both along the drive and at the monument itself.
From there, we continued north into Colorado and spent the night in Durango.
Rafting, Mesa Verde & More Plates
The next morning started with whitewater rafting in Durango.
Afterward, we headed to Mesa Verde National Park.
National parks are another obvious plate-spotting opportunity. Parking lots are filled with people who have driven from all over the country, so we kept scanning rows of cars as we explored.
And the total kept climbing.
And Then...Nothing
The following day we drove toward Great Sand Dunes National Park before eventually ending the day in Taos, New Mexico.
We started the day at 40 of 51. At that point, getting into the mid-40s felt inevitable.
Instead, something happened that I couldn’t believe.
We didn’t find a single new state the entire day.
Hours of driving.
A national park.
Tourist stops.
Parking lots.
Forty states when we started.
Forty states when we finished.
That’s part of what makes the game fun. The first 30 come quickly. Then every additional state becomes progressively harder. Once you’re sitting at 40, you can look at hundreds of cars without moving the score at all.
The Rio Grande Gorge Breakthrough
The next morning we left Taos and headed back toward Santa Fe, stopping at the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge.
At a nearby rest area, the drought finally ended.
We found several new plates.
And then we spotted something almost comical: Alabama and Washington, D.C. — two plates we still needed — parked right next to each other.
After an entire day without adding anything, suddenly two missing jurisdictions were sitting side-by-side.
The board was moving again.
But we were running out of time.
The Ones We Probably Weren’t Getting
We had only a few hours left in New Mexico before the trip was over.
And there was a bigger problem.
We were still missing Alaska and Hawaii.
Those are two of the hardest plates to find anywhere in the Lower 48. Hawaii is particularly ridiculous: a Hawaii-plated vehicle can’t simply drive to another state. Someone has to put that vehicle on a ship and bring it across the Pacific.
With the clock running down, getting either one seemed unlikely.
Getting both?
Forget it.
Then We Saw the Rainbow
We were back in the Albuquerque area and made one more trip up to Sandia Peak / Sandia Crest.
And as we were leaving, I noticed something.
A white plate.
Some color across the top.
For a second, I thought it might be Wisconsin.
But something looked different.
I had my daughter verify it.
Hawaii.
I couldn’t believe it.
Thousands of miles from Honolulu, with only hours left in our trip, we’d found one of the plates I had essentially written off.
That’s the kind of find that makes license plate spotting addictive. (If you want to know what makes the rainbow plate so easy to recognize, see the Hawaii plate guide.)
But apparently the trip wasn’t finished with us yet.
30 Minutes Later...
About half an hour later, near the University of New Mexico campus in Albuquerque, there it was.
Alaska
Alaska and Hawaii.
On the same trip.
And somehow, within roughly 30 minutes of each other.
After spending an entire day stuck at 40, we’d managed to find arguably the two most satisfying plates of the entire hunt almost back-to-back.
Final Score: 45 of 51
We kept looking.
Of course we did.
But Alaska and Hawaii ended up being our final new finds of the trip.
We didn’t get them all.
But I’m not sure I would have wanted the trip to end any other way.
Finding 45 was great.
Finding Hawaii and Alaska on the same trip — and within about 30 minutes of each other — was something I’d never done before.
A pretty good way to end the hunt.