DakotaRog 
A license plate story and then I have to do some work.
In my 9-5 paycheck job, we used to do a few field work trips a year. Usually we flew some place, picked up a rental vehicle, drove around 1-2k miles of back roads to our observed locations, took a lot of geo-referenced field photos and notes on general land use characteristics, and then flew home.
But once in a while we could do a trip from our home base using one of "our" vehicles and save on a rental and its gas (you'd be stunned how much inter- and intra- government charging one another goes on even though we all eventually work for the same government--an accountant full employment act!!). Anyway, we did q week long trip from se SD and got as far north and west as Great Falls, MT and back down, although the last day and half was all open highway miles without any field stops on the way back).
During this trip, we had a young French PhD student along who was working with us that summer. Anyway, he was fascinated about how everything was bigger in the USA and taking him across the Dakotas and Montana, his eyes got even wider. But he loved all the different state (and provincial) license plates that he was seeing and took pictures of them when ever he could. This made me a little nervous, especially if someone saw him pile out of a fed gov plated vehicle, take pixs of other cars license plates, and get back in. I had to curb his enthusiasm several times on the trip, the most memorable was at a c-store stop on an Indian Reservation in eastern MT. I was glad to get out of there!! I think in the end, he got about 30+ different state and province plates. Not bad for a week long trip, although we were sort of on the way to Yellowstone on several occasions.
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