[Awaiting feedback] US North-to-South state challenge: is it possible?

I have an idea for a challenge cache ... I haven't been able to discover a similar existing checker, so before I go to the effort of creating a listing and hiding a container, I thought I'd ask here first.

The idea is to find caches in adjacent US states that a form continuous path from the US northern border to the US southern border. This could be as few as three states (e.g. Washington, Oregon, California), but of course could be much longer (e.g. Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida).

A similar idea is used in GC2Q37R --- here, the challenge is west-to-east rather than north-to-south. (GC2Q37R does not have an automated checker.)

Is this possible? Should I go ahead and create a preliminary listing?

It would certainly be possible, but would need someone (you) to put together a list of state connections. See project-gc.com/forum/read?11,332 for an idea of the appropriate format.

I am going to code a checker for that

There exist code for continuous connections http://project-gc.com/Challenges/GC43JTD/21373
I will extend it for continuous counties between the costs and Mexico/canada

It will be a simple clone of the code to do that with states but a file with a connection graph is needed
The format from the http://project-gc.com/forum/read?11,332 have a few changes
the "States" will be in you case "countries" and "connections" is only lower case
Created a similar files for the states with Canada and Mexico added. But create only a dummy state i them connected to all bordering us states
The format should be valisated json http://jsonlint.com/
The final file for counties is in the link below for format reference
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27625662/Geocache/JSON/USA-ContiguousCounties-MaxB%202016-06-19.txt

The existing file for maxb has enough data in it. The code that walks it is not setup to handle regions.

Team Hugs,

Please create your preliminary listing. I have just started testing such a script.

One issue with the existing connectivity is that it considers only states that border on Mexico to be Southern and your only other path goes through the four corner point which is not considered a connection in that sense.

But you can take a peak at http://project-gc.com/Challenges//24892

Team hugs,

Are you still interested in this checker?

I am, but have been unable to spend any time working on the data preparation. I may try to clear some time to work on this.

This is on hold for other reasons. Outside our control

Do you want the southern border to be states that border Mexico and the gulf of Mexico or just Mexico as the sample indicated?

The former: any states along the southern border (including the Gulf of Mexico).