While I was away being a nerd this weekend (the skinny: 4th place as a team, 9th place individual scorer, discovered that pineapple Coke is good while watermelon root beer isn't), I got a West Virginia quarter as change, an in observing such it came up that I'd not updated the Mark Across America portion of Travelin' Jones to include new quarters and such.

It's nice to know that someone cares. Or is at least willing to make it seem so.

Rather than making the promise to update things that I will likely not keep in a timely manner, here's a preview of the 2006 state quarter designs:

Nebraska - you can see all four finalists here, and I'll mention that the winner is the Chimney Rock design, which I like quite a bit. There is part of me, though, that wishes they had saluted their unicameral legislature.

Nevada - here's the winning design with some finalists. The bighorn ram quarter finished second (it's the state's official animal) and the miner came in third.

According to this article, roughly a quarter of the votes came from children. Which I think goes a long way to explaining why the horsies won over the scarier animal and the gruff miner.

I do think they missed a golden opportunity in not selecting a slot machine paying off in Nevada quarters. Would that be the first time a coin appears on itself?

There's also little to disagree with for this quarter-turned-PSA.

Colorado - if nothing else, the winner and other finalists get the point across: Colorado has mountains. I'm not crazy about this one. Pretty blah, really.

North Dakota - bison are great, but I'd have gone with Roger Maris.

South Dakota - no big surprise that Mount Rushmore won, but I didn't realize that the pheasants grew so big out there. The lack of scale is a little off-putting. The sheafs (sheaves?) of wheat are a nice touch, though.

Tomorrow: 2007!