How America Makes Britain Look Like a Tiny Village
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.ย. 2024
- In which I uncover America's immense size with a series of maps.
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There are still stretches of rural highway in America where it's inadvisable to leave one town for the next without a full tank of gas.
I-80 through western Utah and the entire width of Nevada is a trip you can't take casually either.
@@allisk8001 same with I-15 between Vegas and San Bernardino.
@@allisk8001 I recall once getting up at 3am so we would be across the Salt Flats before the heat of the day started.
And an extra gas can, just in case, especially during winter.
I live in NJ - the most densely populated state. A couple of years ago I had to go to south Jersey for work. I saw I was low on gas on the way back but I didn’t see any gas stations and I figured I’d meet one on the drive to the main highway (which by US standards was not a big highway). Anyway I drove for 30 minutes with my gas gauge below zero and no cell service! When I found this road I still had to continue a few more miles to an exit that had a gas station! And this was literally just over two hours from my home in a very densely populated suburb/small town. We are not running out of land - we are running out of responsible people who know how to use it properly.
Supposedly when Alaska was admitted as a state, Texans began complaining about being the second largest state. Alaskans said, "Shut up about being second largest or we will divide into two states and make you third largest."
I don't know if that's true but god do I hope so XD
That’s just mean
The treaty under which the Republic joined the US actually allows us Texans to divide our state into five mini-Texases.
Obviously we're not doing that.
@@CptJistuce That's a good thing. 2 Texas senators are more than enough.
@@PaulSteMarie Haters gonna hate.
I used to work for a Japanese firm that had a US office. One of the company officers came to visit us. He and I were to fly from San Francisco to Dallas Texas. The entire flight was taken up with him glued to the window, amazed at all of the unused land. He could not comprehend such large areas where no one lived.
Plus not even all the land is usable, cause of things like water availability
I suppose it's because it's flat. He normally wouldn't be surprised that most of it's unusable since the vast majority of Japan is nearly uninhabitable. Basically take California and fill it with the Sierra's.
@@benjamincarlson6994 That never stopped us from making cities in the middle of a dessert like Las Vegas.
@@kosmosXcannon Vegas isn't the best example, cause they actually recycle their water supply very efficiently, but I see your point
@@benjamincarlson6994its also on the Colorado River which means it does have a substantial water supply similar to how Egypt has the Nile River.
But in general the USA has a lot of undeveloped/used land, either because its low value (like deserts, mountains, and dense rainforests) or preserved under one of a million different designations. (National/state park, national monument, national forest, state forest, wildlife preserve, ect) probably the most unique thing about america in this regard is not having the population to make a Tokyo level city that consumes all available land at urban densities.
I have an Xbox friend from the UK & he couldn't believe most Americans rarely or never leave the country.
I tried to explain to him that I don't even live in one of the larger states, but I could drive 500 miles west & still be in my state.
I just told him to think of the United States as Europe & each state as it's own country.
We're simply too big of a country to just take a weekend trip abroad unless you live on the Canadian or Mexican border.
This is also why it's uncommon to be multi lingual in the US. The straight line distance from the southern tip of Florida to the northern tip of Alaska is over 4,300 miles- similar to the distance between London and Nairobi Kenya or Mumbai India. English is used (almost) everywhere that entire distance. Sure there is the French part of Canada, and Spanish is getting popular in the souther US, but English is perfectly sufficient that whole way. There's not a whole lot of incentive to go through the arduous task of learning another language merely to forget it due to lack of use.
@@blurglide There is a bit in southern New England. There are a lot of immigrants from South America here. My parents are actually from Brazil, and Bridgeport, CT is known for having an extremely dense Brazilian immigrant population. I also remember reading somewhere that over 70% of Puerto Ricans living in the US are in Connecticut. The Pawtucket area in Rhode Island (on the northern edge of the state's capital, Providence) also has quite a remarkable amount of immigrants from Portugual, as well as the Portuguese-speaking Cape Verde off the coast of Africa. It's therefore a bit more common for Americans in CT and RI to speak more than one language, but not too much, since immigrants are still expected to learn English. Still, I feel that you can go just about anywhere in CT or RI and reasonably expect to meet at least one person who speaks either Spanish or Portuguese. Other languages are more rare, though I did meet a Polish immigrant woman in Southbury, CT once...
Each state being its own country is kind of the idea
Sure, the founding fathers went with a federation instead of a confederacy (as they tried a confederacy for a few years and it didn’t work) but the core idea has always been that each state is supposed to,are their own decisions, and the federal government only steps in to settle disagreements or for really big things
@@Deathnotefan97 The federal government is going to ruin this country.
It's just far too big & corrupt.
@@tiagodecastro2929 not to poke fun but I'm pretty sure most Puerto Ricans living in the USA are living in Puerto Rico, ie the territory of the USA, they're Americans and part of the USA and have been for around a century now.
Not my story, but the best I have ever heard for this:
A guy who lives in British Columbia got a call from relatives in England: their daughter was flying to Montreal and they were hoping he could pick her up at the airport. He tried explaining why he couldn't but they weren't getting it until he said "YOU live closer to Montreal than I do!"
I don't think that's actually accurate,though? Even if you look at the extremes, Fraser, BC is only 4300 km from Montréal, while Plymouth, England is 4900 km.
@@teh-maxh That's really not that much of a difference when you consider there's an actual ocean involved.
Not totally true....but it nearly is.
@@teh-maxh the driving travel distance is actually nearly 5,000 MILES from Montreal to Vancouver. About 3,200 from London to Montreal & you, of course, needed to fly it.
It's not true, but it's good hyperbole. It gets the point across.
I know people in Britain are often surprised at how few Americans ever leave the country, but from London to Paris is only about 300 miles. From where I live, it's well over 1000 miles to the nearest border with another country. In fact, I've traveled over 1000 miles in 4 directions and never crossed a border. You just get so far and think...oh the heck with it.
I grew up in the DFW metro and as a kid, my family would take a trip from just about 75 mi of Dallas to Corpus Christi on a 7hr trip. I've chatted with some people in Europe and they were astounded we could drive 7 hours and never left the state, whereas if they did a 7hr drive, they left central Germany and was close to northern Italy.
The nearest metropolitan areas outside of the 1 I live near are all about 3 hrs away by car. To leave my state, in 1 direction is about 6 hrs. To drive to a foreign country is at least a 2 day trip by car, well over 1000 miles.
@@Katzztar hmmmph....it shouldn't take you 7 hours to go 75 miles (you can do that in about an hour or so) unless your a turtle. Now if you said, 500 miles...then were getting closer.
@@Katzztar Hey, DFW girl here!
I have relatives in Ohio who were
gobsmacked whenever I'd drive them around the DFW area and they thought we'd crossed over into another state.
@@DJ_BROBOT That's because Dallas to Corpus Christi is 412 miles.
Years ago, we had some colleagues from Germany come to our Maryland lab location. One day at lunch, they wanted to visit another group of colleagues in Florida. We tried to tell them it was impossible to drive to Florida during a lunch break, but they ignored us and tried. They realized their mistake hours later when they were still in Virginia. Of course, they hit the DC rush hour on the way back, and some how it was all our fault.
I-95 in that part of Virginia would have led Dante to add another circle to his description of Hell.
Germans….
@@talisikid1618 surely you jest
@@talisikid1618 Thinking they can Blitzkrieg anytime anyplace.
@@siegelink9549 Clearly, they did not have enough meth.
I remember my friend from England wanted to drive from Kansas City to El Paso and go down to Mexico to visit.
I could tell that he thought it was just going to be a few hour drive.
We were almost to the Kansas Oklahoma border and he asked me how much further as if it wasn't that far.
I show them on the map where we were and he freaked out.
That's the moment Craig started to realize how far it was.
god I had to drive from Phoenix to Kansas City once and I got to say once you reach Oklahoma (well Northern Texas, but that is the shortest part of the trip) it is just a flat hell. Nothing but grass for as far as the eye can see.
@@a-drewg1716 It's a sea of grass. I love it-the wide open spaces feel so free and spark the imagination.
I’m hearing lots of Kansas City talk in these comments surprisingly. As a KC native, it goes without saying that if you drive outside the city it’s just… nothing. I love it though. Growing up in a rural area outside the city just makes you appreciate the beauty of everything though. Those Midwest sunsets are unmatched! And when it comes down to it, there’s a lot of beautiful scenery in the Midwest that’s often overlooked.
My family drove from mn to southern Texas and when we got to the Texas border we were half way done driving. It’s crazy how huge Texas is.
I know Europeans (not calling your friend out) always rip on us for being ignorant of other countries but then visit the US and have still failed to comprehend something that should be as basic as, this place is big as hell. I actually settled on the whole “the US is all of Europe and each state is a country” thing totally independently of Laurence. It’s weirdly accurate, I was just researching and noticed Europe has close to spot on 50 countries while also coincidentally being nearly the same size overall
Weird wild fact: I used to live in Fairbanks, Alaska and my parents lived in southern Oklahoma. I made the trip by car several times. Mathematically I could do it in four days, but was never able to do it in less than five. Anyway, the midway point, in terms of distance, was north of Edmonton, Alberta. Like, I'd just driven across the U.S. (north-south), and to a point in Canada where I was north of >95% of its population, and... I'm still only half-way there.
Incidentally, that's almost exactly the same driving distance as Grimsby, England to Cairo, Egypt.
That dwarf's any long distance trip I've taken. It was a trip South on I-15 into California and North to Yuba City area and then back home to Utah across I-70. Only about 2200 miles in a week.
That helps me get a sense of just how far away Fairbanks is from Oklahoma. And I've never been out of the US.
Damn. And I thought my 1200 mile trips between Texas and NC were long. Fun fact: Halfway point between my home and college was roughly halfway between Mobile and Montgomery (that long ass stretch of road that is pretty much nothing).
Are you driving thru Turkey, or taking the ferry from Naples to Tripoli? LOL
That's insane. Here I thought my drive from San Antonio to Chicago which is about 1,200 miles was long.
Another issue is that a lot of Americans have a poor sense of scale when it comes to other parts of the US. I'm from a larger state and went to Boston a few years ago on a work-related trip. A friend of mine in Rhode Island said, "You should have let me know! We could have met over lunch." I hadn't said anything because to me, Rhode Island was a completely different state and I thought it would be too far away for a visit. In actuality, she lives in RI and commutes to Boston every day for work.
Yeah, what helps me remember how small RI is is that it is roughly the size of the Houston Metro Area. If I can “comfortably” drive (Houston traffic) from Katy to Baytown in 90 minutes, then a drive across RI is nothing.
I think its because US states didnt form naturally like countries do, thats why some are hjuge and some are tiny.
I live in northern Massachusetts my mom takes a commute to southern New Hampshire every day. New England is really that small!
Rhode Island is a strange state. Providence not only lies right on the Massachusetts border, but its a short drive to Connecticut. I live in Rhode Island and people in areas of Connecticut and Massachusetts have a shorter drive to Providence than I do. I've never actually visited Providence I just drive through it to reach Massachusetts.
It actually creates some problems when it comes to things like health insurance. I have a condition that requires a specialized doctor, and the demand far outweighs the availability of these doctors in my area. I had to go to Connecticut in order to get treatment, but my RI health insurance wouldn't be able to cover the treatment since the office was in Connecticut. Luckily there was one doctor close to the border who via proximity was able to accept my insurance.
@@YouCanCallMeReTro Thats not a problem of Rode Iland thats a problem of the USA for not having universal healthcare. It cant be implimented on a state by state level since all the poor will flock to any state that impliments proper welfare, so its up to the federal government to do so.
Once, as a super poor college student, I was asked to be in a wedding for a friend who had already graduated college. The wedding was in Kansas City, and I was living in Cincinnati, Ohio. I could only afford to pay the tux rental and one night in a hotel, so I drove the 9ish hours, ~600 miles early Friday, attended the rehearsal Friday evening, stayed in my hotel room that evening, was in the wedding on Saturday, and drove the same distance back home after the wedding. I didn't even think it was weird, just something that had to be done.
That reminds me of the time my dad was asked to be a groomsman for a friend's wedding in Texas. We live in Pennsylvania. He and Mom made the trip on Dad's motorcycle and enjoyed themselves. It certainly took a lot of planning though.
A couple of times a year, I drive around 700 miles, taking about 11-12 hours, from where I live now to visit my family members for the holidays. And back, often only a few days later. It's just one of those things you do.
Having made that drive I can appreciate it. That was my stopping point when I was moving from Cincinnati to Colorado.
@@RutabegaNGhope you enjoyed it! KC Native here :D
Cincinnati to KC isn’t honestly that bad. My groomsmen came from Wisconsin to Arkansas(~14 hours), and they were still not very daunted by the drive.
I grew up in Ohio, but in college, I did a semester in Paris and lived with a French host family. My host brother was absolutely astounded when I told him I’d never been to California. He just couldn’t believe that as an american I’d never been there. I had to calmly explain that to fly to California from Ohio is as far as it took me to cross the Atlantic to come to Paris. Lol.
I lived in long island and manhattan my whole life, and when i was accepted to school in ohio, it was like a culture shock to be on those highways. And also i saw PINk trees in cincinnati! And i just cudnt believe pink trees existed. Also there was a lot of grass and parks! And people offered to help with almost anything
@@edss7778 Those were probably redbud trees that flower in spring in the Midwest. They’re gorgeous.
@@edss7778 depending on how recent it was it could be those heinous bradford pears. Those things are awful. Or magnolias, we have those too. Neither one is native I don't think.
@@RutabegaNG
Depends on the Magnolia. We have several species native to the states and one of those species is iconic to the South.
Bradford pairs are definitely not native and they are very invasive. On the other hand, they have white flowers, not pink ones.
@@edss7778now you got me really curious because I live in NY and I’d say it’s virtually indistinguishable from Ohio. Pink trees and all, I agree with the other comment that it must’ve just been one of those flowering trees in spring. They’re beautiful reminds me of the cherry blossoms in Japan but it lasts like two weeks tops. Granted when I said NY I was a bit deceptive because I mean a few hours north of the city lol
Years ago I had a friend visiting me in Los Angeles from Connecticut. I decided to take him on a weekend trip to Big Bear and the Mojave Desert. As we were driving on the 10 (I-10 for you East Coasters) freeway for about an hour, he asks me, "so what state are we in now"? I told him we were still in Los Angeles, lol.
I had the exact same experience! I live in Northern CA so I have no excuse, but after getting to their house in Huntington Beach (right at the Pacific Ocean, next to Disneyland) we headed inland to go to Big Bear. I didn't ask what state we were in after over an hour of driving... but I asked how much longer and they laughed at me to say we were still in LA.
To make things worse, that drive is so urbanized that you can't tell the difference between cities, and the mistake the distance for another state is very understandable
@@evanthompson211 That's always my impression of it, too, arguably from maybe Santa Clarita to Palms Springs is "in town" and it takes hours to get through.
I have the inverse going. I grew up in Southern California and moved to the DMV area (DC, Maryland, Virginia for those not local). Being able to hop on a metro train and cross multiple state/territory lines without switching lines in a matter of minutes took some getting used to. Just goes to show how big the States truly are
As a Texan, when I visit New England I'm amazed how quickly you can go from state to state.
Same here when I was a teen going from California to college in New England.
As someone from New England, I’m still surprised by this.
I live in NE and I’m amazed about how long it takes to drive across Texas
Now it takes days
Except for traffic.
When I visited Holland, some people were shocked I had never visited Hollywood or Hawaii. They assumed since these places are frequently in movies, that everyone in the US visits them often. I live in the Midwest and explained that for most people living in the US, Hawaii is a once in a lifetime place to visit because it is a pretty long plane ride and pretty expensive to visit. They were blown away by this.
I have found it is cheaper for me to fly to Europe than to fly to Hawaii.
I would ask them how often they go to Aruba (the touristy island in the Kingdom of the Netherlands)
I'm from Holland lmao
I would guess only a very small percentage of mainlanders have been to Hawaii. Easily less than 10%.
Then you met some weird people.
A few years ago friends from Europe visited. They said they were going to take a drive around the lake. We thought Lake Champlain. A couple days later we get a call only to find out they were on the trans- Canada highway, halfway to California, lost as anyone can be because they underestimated the size of the United States/North America. They thought they could take a day drive around the Great Lakes and be home for supper - starting in Vermont. They were surprised communities could be so far apart. They simply didn't do their homework before coming to the US. Not having a realistic idea of the size of the US, they wasted a good part of their vacation touring our highways because of that.
Haha, That's funny! I have family that live up around the Great Lakes. Specifically, Lake Erie--and Lake Michigan. Because of their massive size--they say it's actually incorrect to call them "lakes". They are Inland Seas. Another fun fact---1/5 of all the fresh water in the ENTIRE WORLD is contained in the Great Lakes.
Ha ha! That hilarious.
@@margietucker1719 I often visit two of the Great Lakes in the same day. Love it, super blessed with our fresh water and beautiful scenery.
exactly...I am from northeastern Ohio, which is off Lake Erie...it takes 5 hours alone just to get to Chicago, which is on Lake Michigan. If you traveled around all the lakes, it would take at least 2-3 days. Its friggin' huge.
@@margietucker1719 We explained the size of the Great Lakes to them when they finally got back. They had no idea of the huge trip they had just made except that they had drove and drove and drove lol. We also had to go over the difference between miles and kilometers because they just couldn't relate mentally. I felt sorry for them in a way, but they made a bad move by not consulting anybody about what they were about to do. All in all that ruined their vacation because they did that the very 1st day when they were still jet lagged. That mistake made them realize that other places on their itinerary were going to have to wait for other visits to the US because they definitely were NOT driving distance.
Fun stories! That misperception of scale goes both ways. My first trip to Paris, France (a really really low-budget excursion), my first evening there I mapped out the places I wanted to see - it would be all on foot (low-budget). I live in a mid-sized US city with a big river flowing past it, and I think that might have skewed my perception somewhat. Anyway I planned a walk to five of my preferred locations in Paris, one for each day, keyed to what I thought my not-fit, not-young body could reasonably do. The first day I set out for my first destination, mentally prepared for a vigorous and lengthy hike. 20 minutes later, I had reached the location. I have to wonder what people around me on the street thought: probably that I'd had a stroke, because I couldn't believe how *close* that destination was to my lodgings! Happy to say, that meant I got to see a lot more of Paris in that week than I'd expected!
Same experience with Rome.... it was just crossing the big multilane avenues.. I'd get next to a local who risked death and trailed behind them to get across.
HIlarious! And a lesson I hope to use in my not too distant trip to Paris (depending on Covid variants)
@@creinicke1000 The best way to cross the street in Rome is to follow a nun.
A few years ago my husband and I decided that we wanted to walk from one end of Paris to the other (West to east) and we were surprised that it only took us a few hours -- with breaks.
It's because European cities are old. Built in a time when the main way of travelling was by foot. American cities have been redesigned for cars the last 70 years.
Laurence, I'm not sure how the UK feels about you, but to many of us Americans, you are a national treasure! Thank you for always giving us an education, food for thought, and so many, many laughs!!!
We're definitely not giving him back!
@@sharonsmith583 lovely sentiment if it were applied to all USA loving immigrants.
AGREED !:-)
I'm a brit living in the village of Britain and think the same.
After seeing you go to War West Virginia I can't get enough of you. I live in Northern part of state but worked on a road construction crew down there. Its a whole different world to me. Can't imagine how a British person felt in the heart of nature. Trees and mountains surrounding you an all sides. Keep it up Lawrence.
Many Americans don't even understand the scale of our nation. I was on vacation in Idaho and totalled my car. When I was talking to my insurance company, the poor girl suggested I rent a car and drive home and when mine was fixed, simply drive back and pick it up on the weekend. I then had to explain that I live in Ohio and that is 2000 miles and three days drive each way. At that point, I didn't feel the need to explain I was in a tiny town where I couldn't even rent a car to attempt that anyway.
She probably didn't even know that you lived in Ohio. So unless you told her she probably thought you lived an hour or so away. But that is a pickle. I once totaled my car 3 hours away from my home in Illinois and that was just a hassle even though it was only 3 hours away.
@@enderjammer5035 Being from Idaho, it always amazes me how many Americans think I’m either from Ohio or Iowa when we are introduced. Sometimes I can’t get it across to them that they aren’t the same thing no matter how much I try. 😊
I didn't really appreciate it until I moved to Arkansas for work. Even though I was only driving from Florida it felt massive just scale that up to the rest and it's really overwhelming.
I worked with a guy who had been stationed in Germany and had some German friends that said they were visiting the states and would like to drop by and see him one afternoon. He lives in southern Indiana and he asked them what state they would be in and they said New Jersey. He just laughed.
This video does make a great point. I worked for a Swedish company here in CA. I remember the dawning look of realization on my Swedish boss's face as I explained: I could start driving, at motorway speed, eastward from Silicon Valley and -- three days later -- would still be in the U.S.
I've driven North-South in the US and was definitely over the speed limit. I managed to get through cities outside of rush hour. I only stopped for gas and barely drank any water so I wouldn't have to go to the bathroom until I got gas.
And 14 hours later I still didn't manage that trip - and that doesn't include going through Florida.
@@recoil53 It is roughly a 20 hour drive from the Canadian border to Los Angeles, all on the I5 at highway speeds.
10 of those hours are solely in California. (5-6 for WA, 4-5 for OR, 10 for CA)
Yes I have driven it, but I spread it over a few days and stopped with friends and family.
@@TenkawaBC This I can vouch. When I would visit Kent, Washington from Orange County, California, it would always seem to take 18 hours
I don't think it plays to our ego at all. From my talks with Europeans they never seem to grasp the scale and diversity of America. We are a huge country and can vary greatly from one region to the next. I suppose it comes from having so many countries with distinct cultures so lose together. To me that's a very remarkable thing, being able to drive across so many wonderful distinct nations in the amount of time it takes me to drive from one side of my state to another.
No ego. If anything your ego was hurt
Honestly as an American I like how compact Europe is to us. When I was in Europe I was amazed how you could travel between multiple countries in one day. That simply isn’t possible in North America unless you buy multiple plane tickets.
Except it is possible to do so in the north/northeast where the states are more close to the average size of a European country.
Why do Americans say multiple instead of many?
@@jillhobson6128 Another one of the many differences between American English and British English. I think that "multiple" in America means "many sets" and "many" means "a large number" in this context.
@@Kay_Sea251 How can "multiple" when applied to countries mean "many sets"? That just doesn't make sense.
@@jillhobson6128 because we do. It's simply an idiosyncrasy.
3:32 Fun fact: Wyoming and Colorado are the same "size," geometrically speaking (4 degrees tall by 7 degrees wide), but because Wyoming is entirely north of Colorado, the curvature of the earth and resultant narrowing of the meridians toward the poles make Wyoming more than 6000 square miles smaller.
After driving through Wyoming I looked it up.. tenth biggest state in the union by area, fiftieth by population. Two Senators and one representative. At one point while I was driving along I tuned around on the radio, ONE station came in, and it was in Indian.
@@JeffDeWitt Feather or dot?
@Giulia No. He meant Indigenous Americans. I'm a Native American because I was born here. I have no Indigenous American ancestors.
@Giulia I think he left out an A and meant Indiana which is state well over 1000 miles away...there are three states between them.
@Giulia I'd have to assume that all involved are familiar with USA geography. That's something I learned never to do with American's as they keep thinking my state (one of the 50 in their home country) is located off the southern coast of California rather than west of Canada.
I’ve also noticed that we don’t measure places we are going by distance but by time. For instance when I go visit my sister in central Pennsylvania from where I live in Washington DC area it takes 4 hours and I have no clue how many miles. Also I know it takes 17 hours to get to Orlando, it takes 12 hours to get to Atlanta, 3 hours to get to NYC (no traffic and early morning on the weekend) 8 hours to get to Myrtle Beach. I have no idea the mileage to all those places.
When you ask "how far is that", what you really want to know is, "how long will it take to get there"
"A 100 mile commute? That's crazy!"
I mean, depending on things that could only be a 1 and a half hours to a 2 hour drive. Seems daunting in some ways, but it also feels smaller that way.
100 kilometers is like 50-60 miles, an hour depending on where you live. It feels like a lot when you use distance, but when measured in time it feels smaller.
Lol, you know what, you're right 😂. I know from where I used to live in Alabama, it would take two hours to reach the airport in Georgia via the shuttle bus. From where I'm at now...not had to take a flight in ages, but probably add on another hour, hour and a half. Absolutely no idea of the actual miles, though 😅
@@theinsanegamer1024 Not an unheard of commute if you take the train.
Then adopt kilometers, hours are an international measurement anyway.
I used to work in the tourist industry here in Hawaii. I remember one young couple that came out here on a round the world trip from Southern France. They had already stopped in Dubai, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc. They were pretty freaking loaded (like multimillionaire kids who inherited some nice fat old money checks). They thought they could visit Hollywood and Las Vegas on the day after they came to visit Hawaii after stopping in Tahiti the day prior. I looked at them and asked, how long was the flight from Tahiti? They said, about 6 hours. I said, now the flight from here to LA is about that long, it'll take you a few hours to go see all the sights you want to in Hollywood, and then it is about that long by BUS (because they thought there would be some sort of train or something) to Vegas. They immediately regretted their decision to book a tour in LA and a tour in Vegas on the same day less than two hours apart. They asked me to read their tickets for the tours. No refunds for cancellations less than 48 hours before start date. Their flight left for LA that evening from Honolulu and their tours were the following morning.
Bet they were exhausted on that trip lol.
Oh well, they're loaded.
Bruh you aren’t making it through the entire county of la with traffic in 6 hours non stop let alone seeing anything
@@Jimmy-yf3yp 😅🤣😂
I used to work for a New York company where my commute was an hour and 15 minutes each way to/from home. I changed job roles and offices, and my commute became an hour and 20-25 minutes each way. So, I was basically driving 3 hours a day just to work. I emigrated to Australia, which has the land mass of the US, but the transport attitudes of Europe, and was repeatedly accused of exaggerating or lying when I said I had left a 3 hour round-trip commute, because "no one" would travel more than 15 minutes to get to work. Australians also didn't know whether to believe me when I said that my plane had taken off with a meter (~3 feet) of snow on the ground. They thought that was some sort of life-threatening blizzard condition that would have shut down the airports.
While working in the auto plant it was my experience that the place rarely shut down for snow. If measured in inches. Possible for feet. If ya can't get out of your own driveway you can't get to work. A few inches? Sweep car off pour coffee in go cup and proceed. Carefully.
When i was younger Iwould drive from NH to just out side Boston. Traffic went 80-90 mph just about the whole way, so it only took 35 minutes. However when it snowed, I would need to leave the gouse 2.5 hours before my shift to make it in. I can remember passing state plow trucks some times that had slid off the roads and gotten stuck.
There are plenty of places in America where even a forecast of snow flurries sends half the population rushing over to Krogers to "stock up" on food and supplies, for fear of getting snowed in.
Does Australia entirely count though, they have all that land but 95% of it is uninhabitable. Pretty sure basically everyone in australia lives on the southeastern coast. It’s a bit like florida lol
@@monhi64 have you seen florida’s population density map before? the panhandle and the everglades are the somewhat uninhabited parts. plenty on the west coast, and eastern america’s theme parks are essentially orlando, florida.
I talk to a guy in the British military sometimes, and somehow his parents got brought up in a conversation as he mentioned not seeing them for a few years.
When I asked why, he said they were too far away.
"Fair enough" I said, "how far?"
A whole... 45 miles!
I drive at a MINIMUM 300 miles every day! I often go upwards of 500-600.
If you want to see how many miles is a long distance, become a truck driver.
Actually, you should look into truck driving! It would give you a chance to see all of the country.
You haven’t taken some things into account that maybe you didn’t realise. Our fuel over here is about 4 times more expensive than yours when it’s AT its most expensive. Currently $9 a gallon. Also, our roads aren’t like yours. Ours bend and curve and snake all over the shop. Yours are straight and long. To get anywhere around here costs a fortune and takes ages even for a short distance as compared to yours.
@Rob American roads are not all straight and long. You're only thinking of the roads in a few regions of a few "great plains" states. Heck, even Kansas has hills (Red Gypsum). Calling our roads all straight and long shows a great ignorance of our landscape. In Charlotte NC, you can literally stand at the corner of Queens Rd and Queens Rd because it loops back on itself. And do you honestly think any road through our multiple mountains ranges could possibly be straight?
@@brynagleich6223 you beat me to it.
@@brynagleich6223 The interstate highways are long and, not necessarily straight, but where they are curvy, the curves are stretched out. But in the cities and towns, roads can be pretty twisty. If you're taking a long, long trip across the country, most of the time you'll be on an interstate, so I think that's what most non-American people might think of American roads. The really flat part of the country is Florida, not Kansas. I have a brother who is into extreme bicycle riding, like very long tours, and he lives in Florida and complains that there aren't any challenging bicycle rides in Florida because the state is so flat. No hills.
@Nicky L its all relative, when you grow up in a village less than a mile long and half a mile wide where most people walk everywhere 45 miles is a long way
I love how other countries (mainly the UK) say “across the pond”. Idk why it’s just so funny calling the Atlantic a pond, and it just feels like they’re talking about us like a neighbor.
I think it goes back to each country using itself as the bar or measurement. The UK is relatively small so the imagine other nations and geographic features to be small. Likewise America is massive and imagines things to also be of comparable size. For example I as an American was somewhat surprised upon hearing that you could pretty much drive across England within roughly a day. While I knew it logically made sense I always thought of it as bigger what with all of the history accents and places. At the end of the day it’s all relative. 🤷
Cause is a pond compared to the Pacific ocean
Well also England likes to pretend it’s where Bermuda is and not in Europe, personally I think that mentality is kinda hilarious but it makes sense from a cultural and political standpoint.
@@thedukeofchutney468most places you could drive across and back in a day! It’s quite a thin country.
Speaking as an English person, it seems to me that Laurence is very, very English, in attitudes and humour. But he seems to have learned to love his new home, and to have totally adapted to it. And he gives us Britons a real insight into the differences and similarities between us and our cousins over there. Very interesting. I'd love to follow him over there one day, and see the place and its infinite varieties for myself. Meanwhile - thanks, Laurence!
I'd love to do the opposite; hope you guys can hold yourselves together.
I’d say we’re more like brothers than cousins
You're welcome to spend a few days with me in SW Michigan, a few miles from the big lake! No salt, no sharks.
@@emilyflotilla931 i might just take you up on that one
@@heccsclips3319 🤣🤣 It's a beautiful area, but up in the NW part of the Lower Peninsula is stunning. Amazing vistas!
I once drove a British visitor about a hundred miles on a route that took us in view of one of the Great Lakes. He was incredulous when I said it has waves like the ocean.
When he finally saw the lake, big enough that you couldn't see the other side, he said "Wow, it does look like the f'ing ocean."
I live on lake erie...10 th largest lake in the world...big right? Huron, Michigan, Erie, Ontario all could fit into Superior
Went to a Green Bay Packers and Houston Texans game in 2013 with some friends. My brother who lives in Houston picked us up at the airport and started driving us to our hotel. One of my friends kept asking him, as we were driving, if we were still in Houston every 5 or 10 minutes or so. And for roughly 2 hours my brother would reply" Yes". We never left the city of Houston for two hours of driving at freeway speeds. Houston is HUGE
Indeed it is. I laughed when I told my brother that it was a “short” drive from IAH up to College Station last year. He was dumbfounded by the fact that it took us 90 minutes to get to my apartment. And I’m just over here thinking, 90 minutes is nothing. I literally drove that distance to pick you up from the airport in the first place.
Houston is literally the size of the entire country of Luxembourg. Urban sprawl is terrifying.
I'm too lazy to look it up and confirm this, but I think that by land area Houston may be the largest city in the US, or even the world for that matter.
@@GuyFromJupiter per some sources I've seen, Houston is #9 in the world in terms of land area. It actually trails Dallas-Fort Worth by about 300 sq kms.
Freeway speed in Texas is about 80-85 mph. Which is about 128-136 kmph.
While standing by to fly home to California from Heathrow my wife & I chatted up this sweet English couple off to holiday in Miami. They mentioned they had friends in Denver and asked us how long it would take to drive there (from Miami) in a rented car. We told them three days and were surprised to see the look of disbelief on their faces. We added, thinking we were being helpful, that it would take one day just to get out of Florida and their countenances fell into total despondency. Having done enough to further Anglo-American relations we took our leave and returned to California. We hope they enjoyed Miami. We're sure their Denver friends understood completely.
I used to work for a German multinational company.
So one time we had people from main HQ over for a while. While here, they thought they would take one weekend here and there to drive to different places in the US. That's when we had to explain about scale.
Which make German ambitions on WWII really hilarious - and explains how they just did not grasp how large the Russian front was.
That must have been so disappointing for them.
@@recoil53 I have heard WWII stories about how as some German POW’s were being transported to the US for the first time, they believed that all the grain fields they were passing was to simply trick them into changing sides. But as the bus kept driving and driving past unbombed fields for a good few hours, they truly began to realize what Germany was competing against.
@@LordDaret Even if WWII had gotten to its actual possible worst, the factories in the Midwest would have been untouched.
Even picking a spot to land in the US is laughable. And Hitler hoping to build a rocket to damage something in America was futile.
@@recoil53 There is a really cool documentary on TH-cam that I watched some weeks ago on how the US outproduced every country in WW2. I myself had no idea of the scale in which the US was churning out tanks, ships, planes etc. Both Japan and Germany grossly underestimated the US manufacturing capability. I think I learned in the video that over 70% of all metal mined during WW2 came from just one US state.
I ordered something large from England last year, I live in Utah and they asked what the closest port was so I could pick it up. (Inland shipping was too much trouble to go directly to me last year.) I told them SF or LA. Out of curiosity, I guess, they asked how many hours away, when I told them 10, they were shocked and asked if I was sure I didn't want it sent to Florida, thinking Florida might be a closer drive.
Sure, they could send it to Florida, and then have it shipped to SF or LA the next day. Maybe SanDiego if you are feeling adventurous.
Lol,
@@rosameryrojas-delcerro1059 LA and San Francisco are about the same distance if you live near Salt Lake City.
I also live in Utah, and it's 6 hours for me to get to LA, but also 6+ hours to get to the other corner of Utah.
About 15 years ago, I worked for a British owned firm that had a divisional office in Italy; the latter had operational control over a division here in the states. My sales territory included Texas, and was of particular interest to our Italian-based director. When I first had the opportunity to meet him, he expressed interest in traveling with me on a road trip in Texas; he took the liberty to generate a list of prospects that we could visit, and seemed confident we could do this in a couple of days. While I don't have 100% recall, the prospects include 3 Houston based companies, 2 in the DFW metroplex, 1 in Midland/Odessa, 1 in Austin (my area of residence), and 3 in Lubbock. If you're familiar with Texas, you already know what I'm going to write, but if you're not, after I looked over the list, I offered that I'd love to travel with him, BUT if we're going to see try and see all of these prospects (assuming they wish to see us) we would need at least two work weeks to do so when factoring in our travel time within some of these cities as well as between them. (At first he didn't understand, but when I offered that Texas is basically the size of western Europe, we found a mutual understanding.)
😂😅🤣
when my wife and I were on vacation in London, we were taking one of the Jack the Ripper tours. Our guide was asking some of the participants where they were from and proudly said San Antonio. The guide stated something like "that's a pretty small town." He was quite surprised when I told him "San Antonio has nearly 2.5 million people."
New York City hand London have roughly the same population but it really doesn't seem like it. Mainly because NYC is confined to an island(s), whereas London is more spread out.
San Antonio is such an odd city. It's the 7th largest in the country but feels so small.
It really hit me how big this country is on my Route 66 trip. North Carolina to Chicago, then to LA via the Route. North to San Francisco and then east taking the "Loneliest Road in America", then through Salt Lake City, Denver, Saint Louis, and back to North Carolina. About 8500 miles in three weeks. What a trip... what a COUNTRY!
North Carolina’s a great state. I’m from South Carolina.
Dang, I though my "dream road trip would be long, but it is only 6600 miles.
The sign at the western beginning of U.S. 50 in Sacramento always grabs me. Over 3,000 miles to Ocean City, Maryland! I have done it from somewhere in Kansas, all the way to Fallon, NV, in various stages. I've had numerous relatives living on the section in Colorado, so been-there-done-that. And I could do it again-- those mountains! But the eastern portion would seem like it could be rather tedious.
What did you think of Salt Lake, the American Vatican?
Did a 2 and a half day road trip from Abq to Tampa Bay (1700 miles) last summer… I don’t envy you in the slightest.
Back in high school we sometimes heard stories about exchange students. The program would have them visit for about a week. They would ask the host families things like, "Can we go to Disney World?" They had no idea that Disney World is over 1,000 miles away from here, as they were used to thinking of "European distances."
I was struck by how big the US is when I traveled to Italy and realized that each state is the size of a country. I also was silenced when lfound out that, if California was an independent country, they would have the world's fifth largest economy
When I was young it was the third largest. But now - China.
And Texas would be like 7 or so.
@@brianb7686 I think TX is en route to becoming first.
@@vtcs1963 It can't, since it also counts towards the US.
@@brianb7686 It was a sarcastic comment meant to emphasize how quickly Texas is growing and how it is the most popular state to move to. I am not from TX and also - hard to believe I know - I was in double honors math my whole life so I definitely aced subsets and Venn diagrams.
This is also why it's uncommon to be multi lingual in the US. The straight line distance from the southern tip of Florida to the northern tip of Alaska is over 4,300 miles- similar to the distance between London and Nairobi Kenya or Mumbai India. English is used (almost) everywhere that entire distance. Sure there is the French part of Canada, and Spanish is getting popular in the souther US, but English is perfectly sufficient that whole way. There's not a whole lot of incentive to go through the arduous task of learning another language merely to forget it due to lack of use.
I agree. But I definitely wish I learned Spanish growing up. I know tons of Hispanics and Texas has a large community of Spanish speakers given how close we are to Mexicoz
I live outside Portsmouth Ohio and I have a use for French,spanish,and Pennsylvania Deutch I know people who speak each
@@wesbrackmanthercenthusiast4695 You realize in the entire country how extremely rare that is
@@floydwhatchacallit6823 Because our common language has been more than enough for the past 300 years.
And having a common single language creates a lot of unity and simplification to the economy to work well in a standardized fashion.
If you come to America, we predominatly speak english. Thats just how it is. Im not going to other countries and demand they speak english for me. I'll research or keep a guide on me for that area and navigate the rest.
USA could definitely turn into spanish country and succeed, tho Anglo speakers might not like that, and also people that like preserving stuff like it was before
I've always said that to truly appreciate the size of the USA, one should drive coast to coast. Even most Americans find it amazing just how large our country is.
Not just the size, but also the diversity!
Doing that is still on my bucket list, and I'm almost 65.
@@lukasmakarios4998I HIGHLY suggest you do this!! Take i40 from the East Coast to the west coast & then take i80 or i10 back across. The difference in terrain is amazing
I did this once. Back in the 90's a friend and I set out to drive the United States. We left Santa Monica and set of towards Florida--took a few months to get there, then on up the east Coast to Maine, later across the northern states to Seattle, then finally down back to Southern California. About 24,000 miles, all told. It was a hell of a journey.
Many years ago, my Filipina wife got a call from some family friends of hers asking if we could pick them up from the airport, San Francisco International Airport. Only one problem: We then lived in Los Angeles, some 400 miles to the south. We explained; they were staggered by the fact that we would need at least six hours of hard driving to pick them up. After all, in looking at the map of the Philippines -- with all its islands -- it seems almost the same size as a similar map of the United States. That is, until you put them side by side, and to scale.
A Filipino co-worker wanted to travel with his family from Los Angeles to Florida. He asked me how long would it take by train. He was very surprised when I said about 5 days.
@@ZER0ZER0SE7EN Was that when you *could* get a train directly from LA to Florida? Now you'd have to go via Chicago and transfer twice.
@@teh-maxh yes. Looks like now you have to go thru Chicago or Washington DC.
Indonesia is surprisingly large, though. Sumatra is much bigger than California.
We lived in the Philippines and all the islands (between 7,000 and 8,000!) combined have the land mass of Arizona.
Years ago, I got a rather interesting awakening at the difference in distances between the US and various other countries. I was active in a hobby, and our national show/exhibition was in my state. A friend of mine from the Netherlands asked if they could stay at my house for the show. My response was "Well, you can, but I won't be here. The show is 6 hours away from my house." It was on the other side of the state from my house. We ended up meeting at the hotel.
Thank you for recognize the frozen chosen in Alaska. We get overlooked by many....especially companies offering free shipping to any US address (or mistakenly say continental US...we are not an island off the southern coast of California despite how it looked on your grade school map).
Alaska is about the size of New Mexico, right off the coast of Hawaii ! How could Alaska get so cold being south of California. (ha !)
I hate that "continental US" exception line. A lot of companies have replaced it with "contiguous US" which sounds the same but is completely different.
As an American, I like this channel a lot. It's very interesting to see an outside perspective on so many things I never would have considered out of the ordinary.
I used to get the same feeling listening to Al Jazeera English
I had a exchange teacher in high school from England.
He had planned to take trips on weekends to places like Chicago and the Black Hills in South Dakota. Then found out once he got here how far those places were from the Twin Cities in Minnesota.
Had to scale back the trips to in state destinations.
😂 classic
You could do Chicago, it is only a 6-hour drive, or a two-hour flight.
We recently took trains from Boston to Oakland and back again a couple weeks later, in those tiny roomettes all the way. Three nights and four days each way. It was an awesome, relaxing, almost other-worldly way to experience the vastness of this country. Trains get you into mountain canyons that no-one else but kayakers can see. Don't die before doing this trip.
I highly recommend you take a trip to Alaska too!
Wanna do this!
My Family had participated in the Northern Ireland Friendship Project some years ago. We had 2 teenage girls stay with us for 6 weeks during the summer. During that time we traveled around our home in Illinois. Then it came time for our annual trip to my Aunt and Uncle's home on a lake in Northern Wisconsin. We think nothing of the 400 mile 7 hour journey up there. The girls had to admit that this was the longest automobile trip they had ever taken.
Hey hey, I did the same!! Lived in a suburb of Chicago, had family in Kenosha WI, & went every summer to the Eagle River area in the north!
Looked at a map and you might see nearly all of Ireland in the same distance.
@@rodhjelm1571 hahahahaha, :)))
Many years ago my friend had a visitor arrive from London. We picked him up at the Detroit Metro Airport and drove off to a party in Traverse City MI (driving into a mild, for Michigan, snow storm. When we arrived we discussed the fact that driving from southeast MI to northwest MI, all still within the lower peninsula, was further than going from London to Rome. That put things into perspective for me.
London to Rome is over 1,100 miles. Detroit to Traverse City is 255 miles, less than a 4 hour road trip. Did you mean a flight from London to Rome is 4 hours? Crossing that much of Europe by car would take almost a full day if you only stopped for gas. Even in a snow storm and driving 35 miles per hour that Michigan trip would only take 8 hours.
@@robertpolk9910 driving across the entire state of Michigan takes 13 hours
@@KyleLeHeup Nope, it's 640 miles from the Michigan border near Toledo to Ironwood in the Upper Peninsula by the Wisconsin border. You can easily get from Toledo to the Mackinaw Bridge in 4.5 hours (340 miles). From the bridge to Ironwood is 310 miles, and even though there aren't any interstates west of I-75 in the U.P., that will only take a little over 5 hours. 9.5 hours of driving time, plus a half hour for gas & bathroom breaks equals 10 hours.
@@robertpolk9910 border of Toledo to Isle Royale
@@KyleLeHeup You aren't driving from Copper Harbor to Isle Royale. You'd be on a boat and that's not driving time. 10 hours is the max driving time to get anywhere you can drive in Michigan.
One of my favorite tidbits with regard to roads: Drive round trip from London to Edinburgh and back on A1 - the longest road in the UK at about 410 miles each way - and you will have covered about the same distance as driving on I-10 from El Paso to Beaumont one way *just within Texas*. And that's only 1/3 of the full length of I-10, and I-10 is only the fourth-longest interstate highway.
This is my story for scale, but a little different.
In 2013 I went to Columbus, Ohio to see a soccer game (US vs Mexico in a World Cup qualifier). On the way up, I stopped to visit family, a hint on how long the drive was. The day after the game I drove all the way home in one shot. A few days later I was discussing it online with someone in some forum who didn’t think it was that weird they sold tickets to fans in something like 46 states for that game. So I did the math and checked it out. My drive from Columbus to suburban Atlanta went through 4 states, about 600 miles, took about 10-11 hours. So I checked it against something in the UK for comparison. It’s about 10 miles less than driving from Edinburgh to London, then turning around and driving back to Manchester.
Someone recently pointed out to me that we Americans describe distance in time it takes to get there and I didn't notice until he pointed it out. But it's also funny because 10 miles by highway and 10 miles through the city have vastly different times and the city distance can seem further away.
A friend of mine's parents came to visit him in Maine from Utah. They kept asking him how far away things are and he would answer in time not in miles and they would get frustrated with him.
45 miles away by back roads and 45 miles by interstate are very different
A flight from NYC to LA takes about as long as a flight from NYC to London. So yeah, it’s big.
see, that tells you how big the US actually is from that fact alone...wow thats crazy
Is it really? I’ve done a flight from NYC to London, it was 7 hours (it’s 7 hours too from LA to NYC?).
@@alfredoangel2359 a flight from NYC to LA is 6 hours 10 minutes, give or take.
@@alfredoangel2359 It's a shorter distance but because the plane has to fly against the jet stream from NYC TO LA it takes longer.
My theory about the size of US states increasing exponentially as the country acquired more land going westward is that it is consistent with the speed of transportation increasing over time. During the original colonies drawing up of borders, usually along waterways, the speed of travel equated to that of a horse (or maybe four horses). As America expanded west in the 19th century, it became possible to cover greater distances much faster through the advent of rail travel, therefore it made more sense to draw a boundary for a state that could be traversed in a single day by train, which would have taken many days on horseback. The end.
That's partially what happened. Another thing they did out west here was make a large area a territory, like Washington Territory. Then later on they broke Idaho off from Washington Territory. When counties were originally set in states or territories they would be large, then as more people moved in and population hubs were established counties were broken into smaller units. Generally the higher the population the smaller the counties became.
I was reading up on some Oklahoma history and discovered when they were setting up schools they put one in the center of every nine-square-mile block and named each school after the family living closest to it. This way no student had to walk closer than three miles one way to school.
There is much, much history of how everything was set out in this country.
Another reason was slavery. I hate to beat that dead horse, but the Missouri Compromise meant a lot of debate and deal-cutting about balancing slave states and free states so that neither political-economic faction would have a clear majority in Congress and the Senate. Without that issue, I wonder if the territories would have been split into smaller states.
See "How the States Got Their Shapes" by Mark Stein for the history of the boundaries.
You might enjoy the series "How the States got their shapes". Two seasons of 10 episodes.
The real reason is because the eastern states didn’t want to give up their majority in the Senate.
I will say, I got an up-close experience with the scale of the States a few years ago when I took an around the country train trip. I am from New England. And for the first time in my life, I saw land extending as far as the eye can see to the horizon, in all directions. Singular farm stretching to the horizon. Desert's stretching to the extent the eye can see. The bloody endless sky of Montana.
And I should point out that I spent a week of this trip onboard the train itself.
I-70 west of Green River, Utah.
I was a Navy brat and crossed the country many times as a result. I have difficulty grasping the size of our country. I honestly don't think most Americans have a grasp on the size of our country since it might take them a day or so to leave the state they've never left!
Sounds a bit boring spending much of your time on the train, but I hope you enjoyed the trip!
@@kristypickett4227 no it’s actually quite entertaining. The scenery changes pretty quick and can be pretty beautiful just watching the world go by
I took the train to Montana (from Syracuse, NY) over Christmas. Beautiful country!
I was telling a coworker how I was going to visit a relative who'd moved to the middle of nowhere Idaho and it would be a 12 hour drive. They asked why not fly? Because it'd take 2 hours to drive to the airport, sit around there for another hour or more, take a couple hour flight to Idaho, rent a car, then drive three more hours. Realistically it doesn't take much more time to drive. I'd rather live somewhere with trains, but oh well.
Same, when I used to live in Japan, anything above 50km felt like a long journey. But after living in Canada, 50km feels like a cakewalk (or drive in this situation). The car I had in Japan took 12 years to have 100,000 km on it, I did that in 4 years in Canada.
I had an Australian relative visit us in California. We were fairly young teenagers (I was 16 and JUST got my license, and he was a couple years younger) at the time and he said he wanted to go to Disneyland "tomorrow." We live about 6 hours north of Anaheim. It wasn't like a little day trip. It would have to be a well planned weekend at best. We were too young to even rent a hotel room at the time, and there was no way to convince our strict parents to take a spontaneous trip. He got so upset that he came all the way from Australia and didn't even get to see Disneyland. 😅
Australia's basically the same size so he's just stupid lol
Well, I’d argue that Australia is even more separated then the USA.
Years ago, when we were stationed in Dunoon, Scotland, we used to hear about people raving about the salmon they used to be able to get in Inverary, but were warned that it was a long way, and that we should plan it as a day trip. So we got the kids ready early in the morning one day to head out there. This was way before the internet, and the maps somehow didn't really give a true idea of scale. Anyway, we got there something like the better part of two hours before they even opened up in the morning, and had to kill time with a two and four-year old for some time. Luckily the scenery was beautiful, and walking around the area was a joy. I think we even found a little playground for the kids. I just looked up the distance because I honestly couldn't remember how far it ended up being, and even though I knew it had not turned out anything like the distance it had been described as, I was still surprised to find that the drive was just shy of 24 miles.
Lol. Maybe they assumed you'd be hiking?
Had to have figured you be hiking. I live 30 miles outside of the nearest city. And my family traverses that twice a day.
You were going 12 mph the entire time?
NY to LA is roughly equivalent to a trip from Moscow to Lisbon in terms of covered distance
Sort of off-topic, but geography can also be a different experience. My family live in the Chicago suburbs. We have relatives in Norway, from that part of the family tree. Some of our Norwegian relatives are big into cross-country hiking: you get a compass and a topographical map, and have to get from point A to point B. Norway is very mountainous. Those fjords aren't just for show; the whole country is like that, even the "flattest" part. These relatives came over to the states for a hiking activity here in Chicago-land. They had their compass, they got their topographical map, and... were utterly confused. "The map shows a hill nearby, but I don't see any hills at all!" A Norwegian's definition of a "hill" and an Illinoisan's definition of a "hill" are two very different things! They also experienced our highway system: eight lanes of traffic in *each* direction!! There's not enough room in Norway to fit that!
Of course, if they thought IL was flat, they would have lost their minds in Nebraska.
On the other hand, if they had held their hiking activity in Colorado, they would have felt right at home!
So much diversity, when your country is most of an entire continent.
I recall when I was a kid there was a guy from Illinois that moved down to where we were living in central North Carolina. He enjoyed running and he mentioned to my mother that he had trouble with the hill. She was confused, as were all of us, because we didn't know of any hills in the area.
Of course in Colorado they would be impressed with mountains that probably dwarf theirs.
"Most" of a continent.
Shots fired!
🤣
I do remember noticing exactly how flat Chicago was the first time I went when I was a kid. I'm from cincinnati. The glacier stopped a bit north of here. That's not Western Colorado, but it's not flat either.
If they come back and want tiny streets at insane angles, send them to Seattle. XD
I was born in Australia and moved to America when I was 7, and I experienced reverse shock when I visited South Korea. It was absolutely insane to me that we could traverse the *ENTIRE* country of South Korea in 4-5 hours when that was the same amount of time it took us to drive out of our own state in the US. That was when I realized just how massive the US is. Some cities here are larger than entire countries too.
When i first visited the UK i spent 3 weeks’ holiday exploring london, wales, england and Scotland and wss comforted by the fact that i saw so much in that timeframe by car, train, on foot. This could not be done as easily in the US.
I got back a couple of weeks ago and used trains to travel England and Scotland. Loved that the stations are city center. Not sure I'd want to drive over there...
I remember driving to El Paso, Texas and I could see it up ahead for over an hour. It was so flat and far away, it was an optical illusion that it was close.
That seems creepy.
@@orangeziggy348 first time you see it yeah but there are a lot of places like that here especially on the plains
A friend of mine from Virginia said that back in the late 80's when his dad first started driving a truck for a living he was driving out in the southwest when he realized he had to use the bathroom but as he could see the lights of the town just ahead figured he'd stop in the town once he got there. Back in Virginia if you can see the lights of a town you're typically only few minutes out. Well, he continued driving for over an hour and still hadn't reached the town. Needless to say he was short one sock by the time he got there.
driving to Las Vegas is like that especially.
That's how I felt driving across the Great Plains to Denver. "Oh look we're almost there". 5 hours later: "Oh look, we're almost there"
When I lived in Australia I would hear Aussies talk of going to America. They would say it was "scary." One man drove all along the West coast and couldn't believe that all that had been built in the same time Australia was built by Europeans. "It's one city from LA, and goes on and on for hours. Then you go trough some towns and into what seems another city that goes on and on for hours, then some small towns and another city and another, for thousands of miles. How did they build all that. We can't compete!"
just california/oregon/washington have 2x the population of Australia, and the entire US has 15x the population but both countries have similar land size if you don't count Alaska.
Sounds like your Aussie mates drove parallel to the coast. Had they driven inland they would have said the exact opposite: "You drive for hours and hours and hours across the desert and then you come to a small town. And then you drive for hours and hours and hours more, and then there's another small town. It's just like Down Under!" LOL They don't call US Highway 50 across Nevada "The Loneliest Road" for nothing.
@@roldanbelenos1549 😂
The SoCal Megalopis is no joke
@@ghost2coast296 California alone has more people than Australia, and also more people than Canada.
I'm from Houston, Texas. The fourth largest city in the US. While taking French in high school, we were always told that France was about the same size as Texas. But it wasn't until recently that I looked up the size of England compared to Texas, and was surprised to learn that it can fit 2 and a half times in it! I wonder sometimes how such a small country could have controlled so much of the world for so long, but then remember that it has a couple of thousand years of recorded history that my state and country don't have.
Someone in Switzerland was curious about a potential long-distance move I was researching, from DC to Denver. She had no sense of scale for how far that meant and asked what the equivalent of that would be in her area. Using Google Maps and some trash math, I pinpointed her rough location and drew a circle with the radius of "DC to Denver." The circle enclosed most of Europe and a bunch of water. It blew her mind. XD
I measure places by how long it takes to drive to them more than the physical distance. A hundred miles isn’t much in a rural area. But if you’re traveling through LA County during traffic on any part of that 100 mile trip, yikes. That’s too “far” to me!
@TransitNerd lol
My family took a trip to San Diego this last summer. I was surprised that it took the better part of 6-7 hours to get beyond Victorville, 146 miles (bad traffic the whole way). Usually I can cover usually cover 300-400 miles in that time in most places in the interior western states.
And at the same time, because L.A. is so spread out -- include Orange County, western Ventura County and eastern Inland Empire -- it's nothing to drive 35 or 40 miles to go do something.
In Friday rush hour traffic it can take four hours to get across LA county.
In Northeast Pennsylvania we do that too. Everything is so many minutes or hours away rather than miles.
Laurence, as much as I enjoy your videos, I think I enjoy the comments to your videos more. I have read all the comments about the size of the US vs the size of the UK. People from all over have gotten excited enough to share memories. I myself have littered it with my comments. We have gone from talking about geography to talking about languages, and sharing all kinds of things. We need this! More if this! Keep it up! We need more of this!
I've left about a dozen comments throughout the comments on this video too. It's a fun one.
When I worked in Linkoping (Linköping) Sweden (I'm from Ohio in the US) I did a drive with Swedish colleagues to visit the west coast Swedish city of Gothenburg (Göteborg). It was a three hour drive, but they had to stop in the middle for a coffee rest. Really? The first three hours in a US trip is when you just are getting settled in. Hint: if you have to drive a long way in the US, I recommend audio books.
The Canadian Provinces are also absolutely monstrous in size. An example I always love to mention, the Drive from Toronto, Ontario to Jacksonville, Florida is about 1,140 Miles, the drive from Toronto, Ontario to Kenora, Ontario, 1,150 Miles.
I recently drove from Texas to Virginia, and it’s astounding how long you can drive while still being in the same state. I remember Tennessee seeming to go on forever.
Tennessee is nothing. Try driving across Montana or up through California.
I drove OTR tractor-trailer for a time, and yeah that really brought home just how massively large the US is. When you first get into it, and start laying out your trip with your road atlas, there's a tendency to think that the milage numbers must be off, it doesn't look that far...but don't be fooled, not only is it that far, it'll take longer than you anticipate as well, and sometimes far longer.
In Texas and many other areas west of the Mississippi we don't measure in miles but in hours.
Yeah, I drove OTR also. It really hits you when you can't get across north Texas from east to west in one full day without running out of hours..
I thought my occasional trips from the east coast to Wisconsin were long, but that's barely 1/3 of the way across the US.
@@ElicBehexan We do the same here in Idaho.
@@ElicBehexan Isn't it like 900 miles from Brownsville to El Paso?
I was cruising along one day listening to a retro radio program, when a story was told about how Paul McCartney once paid a taxi to take his pet chickens from his place in London, 400 miles to Scotland. I laughed a bit at that tale, then got to thinking. Wait, those places are only 400 miles apart? From my little city in southeast Idaho to the northern-most town in Idaho is 600 miles!!
I've lived in the US for a while, but I'm Brazilian and currently living in Brazil. Obviously it's not as big as the Us but it's also a huge country. It does affect the way we look at maps from European cities. We tend to think distances are much bigger than they actually are. In fact, I was surprised to see that Adrian's Wall is just about 120 km long (if my source is correct). For us Brazilians (and I think Americans as well) it's not that far.
I also remember when I spend vacations in Italy, in a valley at the Dolomitas. When my hostess found out I was walking from one town to another she was astounded. She said I shouldn't do that, tahte it was too far and she would be glad to drive me around. But hey, most towns were less than 5 km (3,10 miles) apart.
I walk 3.5 miles for fun after work every day& I'm a senior citizen. you must have been stunned.
I see distance in four classes. Flying, Driving, Biking, and Walking, 3.1 miles is definitely biking distance, unless parcels or heinous hills are involved.
You can speak for me about size, my (south) American sister. Hadrian's Wall is tiny. Remember the stupid wall Trump wanted to build? It was 725km and we considered it a failure, not just morally but it's pretty useless due to the diminutive size. We have art pieces bigger than Hadrian's Wall.
Actually, if I remember correctly, Brazil is larger than the lower 48 states w/o Alaska and Hawaii. It is also a huge country.
@@kaldo_kaldo no we didn’t. And it’s still being built. Failure of dems to complete is one of the reasons majority Hispanic counties have turned blue from red. They don’t want that invasion either.
When I visited Ireland I left the west of Ireland to drive back to Dublin. The bed and breakfast owners stayed at in county Mayo, expressed concern for such a long drive. I didn't understand their angst but since I had driven it a few days prior, I assured them that I'd be alright. I thought about it and I was still perplexed because we were all speaking English but clearly weren't communicating. When I got home I looked up the square miles of Ireland and Wisconsin where I live, and Wisconsin is larger than the whole country of Ireland. Finally I understood their concern since there probably weren't too many people who drive that in a day without blinking.
My grandpa has always had an "I'm always right" streak, and my mom loves the story of the one time she got him to admit that he was wrong.
She was living in L.A. at the time and he came to visit. Noting how dirty the city was at the time he said "If you just clean up your block, then the next block is going to want to clean up! And the next, and the next, and soon this whole city will look amazing!" So she decided to skip the freeway and take only surface streets to her place. By the time they finally got to her house, he had to admit that the city was too large for that to work.
I used to frequent international airports and it never ceased to amaze me all the Europeans and brits that would come to USA and say things like...
Oh.. we are just here for the week... we are going to start in New York, then head down to Miami, then go to Vegas, then we will go to San Francisco, then spend our last day in LA.
and then i would just ruin their plans.. not because im evil and i enjoy it, but because i didnt want these people to book hotels and waste money when they might at best see 2 cities in a week.
I remember when i first ran into families that would say these things and i just assumed they were super rich (since i knew some people that would fly to different states everyday just for lunch). But after meeting so many internationals i realized how little other countries think the US is. Even if you tell them and show them maps.... they still dont get how big US is until they fly a few places to get an idea of its size.
San Bernardino county is mostly desert. My son-in-law is a Marine stationed in Twentynine Palms. It used to be an Air Force Base but they deemed it uninhabitable, so they made it a Marine Base.
You know the Marines are badass when their base is put in a place considered uninhabitable for all other life.
It was actually the U.S. Army Air Force. The U.S. Air Force did not become its own branch until 1947. In July of 1944 the base was taken over by the Eleventh Naval District, which was headquartered in San Diego, and aptly named Naval Auxiliary Air Station Twentynine Palms. After the end of WWII, in 1952, Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton Headquarters issued Post Order 343 which created the Marine Corps Training Center in Twentynine Palms. So no it was not taken over by the Marines because it was "deemed uninhabitable". LOL
IE resident here. SB county is so big that we have multiple biomes. Also have forests here. Though, your son-in-law is not wrong. It IS mostly desert.
@@factsoverfeelings1776 Thanks for taking the words out of my mouth. Also, the land was cheap. Also, good to have uninhabited land if you're going to do military exercises and set off bombs and such.
Ah the stumps. A lot of great memories in that place
I'm a Californian and when I hear people who want to visit plan their trip to see everything in California in one week, I strongly urge them to switch their plans up. Unless of course, all they want to do is drive, because that's all they'll be doing! California itself is a big state and there is so much to see. Add up the rest of the US, I suggest that people pick one place and spend more time in that one place, rather than try and see everything.
Forget California- people want to see NYC in a weekend and I tell them it isn't going to happen.
California is weird geographically, because you can cross it E-W in 4 hours, but N-S takes the better part of 2 days.
@@brianb7686 it’s like Florida - you hit the Welcome Station and its still a 6-8 hour drive to Orlando.
I know someone in Texas who wishes she could visit California someday. I would advise her to head to Death Valley, drive up the eastern Sierra to Yosemite, then cross via Tioga Pass, eventually crossing the state either in the Delta region, or further north near Lassen and Shasta to the Redwood Coast. That way, she could see the lowest point in the 48 states, the highest point; the oldest trees in the world, the biggest trees, and the tallest trees; the desert, the ocean, the Central Valley, and volcanoes. Plus, depending on her route, the Golden Gate Bridge. Not trying to dismiss my home "state" of southern California, but if one's travel goals include more scenery and less people, that's where to go. Allow at least 2 weeks to get a good look.
@@exrobowidow1617 It’s hard to do in one shot. I’ve been to LA, San Diego and San Francisco separately. A bucket list item for me is a drive up the PCH and spending some time in the high Sierra’s. Yosemite is in there as is Muir Woods.
My undergraduate university in upstate NY was about 2.5 hours away from my home. On a good morning, my mother could drive over to my university, eat lunch with me, help me to pack up my dorm, and then we'd drive back home for the Thanksgiving break. A total of 5 hours for her in a single day, yet still entirely manageable. My college was 120 miles away, which means that my mother covered 240 miles in that 5 hour back and forth trip. And that was nothing compared to my younger sister, whose college was 5.5 hours away from home; yet, her college was still in NY! And my father, who grew up in the Bronx, went to college at Buffalo, and drove 8 hours to his university! NY is massive state, and it's far from the largest state overall. That really helped me to understand the scale of America overall.
From Syracuse, NY, I had a six hour drive to get my son to SUNY Plattsburgh up on the border of Canada, and a six hour drive the opposite direction to get my daughter back and forth to Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, PA.
@@amybee40
Hey fellow New Yorker! I've driven through Binghamton, Albany, Syracuse and Rochester. And I remember the drive to Pittsburgh; it was always brutal. To think that you could spend 8 hours in the car without even leaving Pennsylvania is madness. People forget how large that state is too. It's very rectangular.
One day while on a trip to the US, my mom asked how far away was the 40 minute drive to the pharmacy, I told her that it was like driving from our house to the big lake we have back home around two departments away, usually a 3 hour drive (curvy roads). If we add the round trip distance from our hotel to the pharmacy (within the same city), it would have come down as us driving from the capital to another country (6-7 hour drive) we never even left the city, and it was a small 2 hour thing we did.
Being an Army brat that has travel across country several times and also being from Wyoming, I have always known how big this country is. However when I was 10 we moved from Tennessee to Ft Richardson, Alaska. We drove, stopping along the way to visit sites and family. We drove the Alcan highway before it was paved, towing a small pop-up trailer. It was an amazing trip and why I love road trips to this day. As an adult, I have driven from Denver to Austin many times and also from Denver to Great Falls Montana. We have had many road trips all along the Rocky Mountain region. I drove once coming back from our last station, from the Philadelphia area to Denver. My sister and I shared the drive and it was strange to go through large towns when I had learned to drive in the country. That was while I was in college. Even though I have lived in places with a lot of trees, it has been so long that I now get claustrophobic if I can’t see all the way to the horizon and a full sky. I am very much of the West - I love the wide open spaces.
We drove from Lackland AFB to Eielson AFB near Fairbanks in the 1970's. The Alcan was all gravel the size of marbles and trying to avoid hitting moose, wild horses and a lynx. What great memories!
I was an Air Force brat. My dad was called back to active duty for the Korean War. I was 2 or 3 and I vaguely remember driving from Minneapolis/St. Paul to Riverside, California in late 1950/1951. This was pre interstate road system. I remember two lane roads and it taking seemingly about a week to arrive in California. As an adult I have traveled from where I now live in the Chicago area to Seattle via our interstate system and the Trans Canadian system from Toronto to Victoria, B. C.
One part of a trip out west was from Lake Louise, Alberta to Yellowstone National Park. It is about 750 miles but it took us 16 hours to travel the distance because I insisted that we spend time about 2-3 hours in Great Falls, Montana. I WAS SO SICK OF BEING COOPED UP IN A SMALL CAR. I do LOVE road trips but not to many miles per day. I love to see historical sites and spend time at each location. I also love the wide open expanse of the middle parts of the USA and Canada. Trees make me feel like I am suffocating. Beautiful to be in for a short period of time. On a trip to Boston a few years ago. I went to see the site where the revolutionary war started in Lexington/Concord. I asked the docent why the artwork on the walls showed no trees at the site but now the battle ground was a virtual forest. He had said that by 1775 the area had been clear cut for wood to build ships. After the war ended the area was allowed to grow back naturally with trees. 240 years later the forest was back and thick. .
Hey, are we related. My family of 8 moved to Alaska pulling an 8x20 trailer we lived in for 18 months. The AlCan was still dirt…and I’m still here. I love road trips, recently drove over 4,000 miles alone in December from Washington to Florida. Gotta love the US.
@@susanapplegate9758 We MUST be related because we were military brats. My dad was in WWII, Korea and retired right before Vietnam He was part of Strategic Air Command. We lived ALL over Europe and the USA. Wonderful road trips and many nice memories.
Navy brat during Vietnam. Tampa to Whidbey, Washington. Took two weeks stopping at the Grand Canyon for a day and a day in California at the beach. Epic, awesome trip. One of many cross-country trips as a kid.
If you flatten out WV, it’s as big as TX. Lol. Once at work, dealing with some GPS data for trucks, I was asked why there were more driving miles between jobs in WV than TX as they were essentially the same. I took a piece of paper and said “this is TX”. I wadded it up, through it down and said “this is WV”
Idaho is the same way.
Like Vermont, anywhere you go the way is uphill - there and back
Very interesting description!
Colorado tells that joke too.
@@alanlight7740 Yeah, but not really. CO has huge mountains, but your state isn’t all mountains. WV is completely encompasses by the Appalachian Mountains. Not the highest obviously, but it’s the entire state. We don’t have flat areas here.
As an American I'd like to point something out. Brits wonder so often why we are the least likely people on Earth to travel outside of our own country... Well, this is why. Why go exploring more of the earth when we have so much around us we can't even take it all in. That's especially true in more rural places like here in the mountains. Simply put, there's so much space here, and yet we have fully developed infrastructure and economy, that most of us have no desire to go anywhere.
Having seen your country, and agree with your sentiment that it is amazing, I still find it very blinkered, bordering on purposeful ignorance that some one WOULDN’T want to see more of the world other than what’s on their own doorstep. America isn’t the be-all and end-all.
@@1978rharris 🤡
@@1978rharris Because it takes quite a bit more effort to go to another country. From the UK to France is hardly a trip compared to going to Mexico or Canada from most of the U.S. And, yes, I have been to other countries (5) and lived abroad for 16 months. But I understand why most in the U.S. have not. Try not to be so condescending towards others when you haven't their experience.
That’s true except for places like Jerusalem or Machu Pichu. You can’t find that here
I have been to all 50 states. It has been an amazing adventure. There are some amazing places in every state. However, I have been to Europe, Africa, and Asia. I used to travel inside the US in the spring, and elsewhere in the world in the fall. I have never understood the mentality of “I won’t travel outside the US until I travel in the US”. I’ve heard it enough. One doesn’t preclude the other. Every place has things that are amazing, and things that aren’t.
American here. I was planning a trip to Europe for my honeymoon and trying to plan out travel times. I plugged Edinburgh to London into google maps and thought “Well damn, I’ve driven further than that to buy a dining table”.
This was a fun video. I live in the Metro Detroit area (Michigan), and it's fun how people forget sometimes that Michigan is comprised of two different land masses (the Upper and Lower Peninsulas). This makes for some interesting quirks about our state.
The biggest quirk is the two most distant major cities in Michigan. Monroe, MI (SE Lower Pen, near Toledo and the Ohio border) and Ironwood, MI (NW Upper Pen, on the Wisconsin border). There are two main overland routes between these cities. The first is entirely through Michigan, going over the Mackinac Bridge through both peninsulas. This is a 627 mile route, taking 10 hours, not counting stops. The second route takes the long way around through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and up through Wisconsin. This 673 mile trip is 10 hours, 2 minutes total. There's another route going to the west side of Michigan's Lower Peninsula, hopping a ferry for 61 miles across Lake Michigan into Wisconsin, and completing the rest of the 590 mile journey. But this way is 10 hours, 21 minutes long.
To put this into a little more perspective, when I was stationed in the Washington DC area during my military service, I would make the drive back home to visit family. This drive took me through Virginia, West Virginia, a sliver of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, to get back to Michigan. It was a 551 mile drive totaling 8 hours, 13 minutes (plus stops). That's right. The driving distance between Washington DC and Detroit is shorter than the driving distance between Michigan's two most distant cities within the state itself.
Fun fact that 551 mile trip is just 19 miles longer, than going from Nashville to New Orleans.
Going from isle royale (northwest Michigan) to Lambertville (southeast Michigan) is over 13 hours.
Speaking of travelling long distances in the USA, when I was in my late teens I hitchhiked 2,200 miles from Louisiana to Los Angeles to San Francisco. Then I hitchhiked back. Roughly 4,400 miles in a little over a week. Kids, don't try this today. Those were very different times and I had a Nordic giant as my travelling companion.
This reminds me of a Mr. Ballen story ...
How long do you think the trip took?
I have a friend born and raised in England. I asked her once if she had ever been to Scotland. She had not; too far to travel. As someone born in Oregon, raised in California and living in Utah (with a 5 year exile in Arizona) I was amazed to discover that a trip from Dunstable to Edinburgh was 370 miles and would take under 7 hours by car. But, one could take the train! My family would take a similar trip (Modesto, CA to Sutherlin, OR 490 miles, just over 8 hours) almost every year to visit family. Living in Utah, we would drive to AZ or CA fairly often, making the trip in 12 hours. Most folks living in the Western US think nothing of hopping in the car to drive a couple hours for a day trip. My rule of thumb is the visit has to be twice as long as the time to get there. This was very enlightening and I learned a lot...thank you!
I am from Iowa, a town as far east as you can be, and lived in the Intermountain west for about 15 years. Made the 20+ hour drive (one way) several times a year nearly every year. Only broke it up into a two-day trip once (snowed off I-80 in Rawlings, WY when they closed the interstate). All the other trips I drove straight through. The first time it was quite a shock. Where I grew up, a 2.5 hour trip to Chicago or 3.5 to Des Moines was long. Situations sure change one's perspective!
I agree with your rule of thumb!
@@mathewfullerton8577 Being picky here (sorry!) but it's Rawlins, WY - no "g."
I-80 in Wyoming is notorious for hazardous winter driving conditions. So much so that those conditions are pretty normal and expected - as are occasional closures. As are lots of snow plows and snow fences.
A book was even published about I-80. Snow Chi Minh Trail: The History of Interstate 80 between Laramie and Walcott Junction. It describes the dangerous history of winter travel on the 77-mile stretch of I-80 between Exit 235 (near Rawlins and Hanna) and Laramie.
We are planning a road trip from coastal North Carolina to the Olympia area of Washington state this summer. The last time we did that trek, it was 5 days each direction. Granted, we didn't try to drive straight through, and I demanded decent stopping times as we were camping. (I dislike putting tents up in the dark). Still, this time we are taking a grandson with us. The Adventure Awaits!
I'll admit I've never been to North Carolina, but the Olympic Peninsula was one of the most beautiful places I've been. (Just to let you know, one day it'll run into the rest of Washington and probably make more mountains erupt!)
Make sure while in Olympia you visit the Hoh Rain Forest in Olympia. It is beautiful and the trees and mountains go right to the ocean.
I've done Southern California to North Carolina straight through and I definitely don't recommend it! We only stopped for food and bathroom breaks. It took us about 45 hours. Take your time and enjoy it!
@@dianethoroughman9541 Olympia is a city at the south end of Puget Sound. The Hoh Rain Forest is at the NW corner of Olympic National Park. It's a several hour drive.
@@kristend344 ohh, okay. I should have remembered that. Oops, my bad.
Hearing a British/European tourist say they want to see all those things in a weekend makes me wonder if they have world maps in the UK/Europe. Their disbelief when you explain they pretty much just said their weekend plans were to see the Taj Mahal, Hadrian’s Wall, Gibraltar, and the Parthenon.
I grew up in the Inland Empire. (along with New Mexico and Texas for a while a kid) The first time I got on a plane was to travel to Seattle, Washington for the weekend.... I always felt the IE was a nightmare of exaggerated suburban sprawl, but I was still in shock on my nighttime flight back home. As you fly over the San Bernardino Mountains, the Ontario Airport in the valley is just close enough that they begin to lower altitude over the mountain range and you get some good turbulence. The entire flight was dark, with small pockets of light alobg the ground as we passed Reno, Nevada and (perhaps Fresno?)... but then the windows light up like daytime as you come south over the San Bernardino Mountains and light stretches out to the horizon in two directions from Los Angeles and Anaheim out to Palm Springs, Indio... and even more lights sprawling south to Riverside and Moreno Valley... The scale is off the charts.
Have you ever considered a trip to Alaska? I would imagine that could be a whole host of videos.
Would you recommend mosquito or frostbite season?
@@calvingreene90 the weird transitional seasons
Southern AK (where all the touristy stuff is) doesn’t get too cold - you also have the advantage of saying you’ve been in a rainforest.
Some of the best national parks.
@@calvingreene90 That's kind of like Texas. We've got hail/tornado season (Spring), Hell (Summer), allergy season (Fall) and Ice season (two days out of the year).
I took part in a school exchange to Minnesota when Reggie White joined the Packers. My host father, originally from Wisconsin: "Great! It's only a six hour drive to Green Bay!"
On that same trip, we visited some state park which still has an original cabin of one of the pioneers, forgive me for instantly having forgotten the name. The guide tried to impress a bunch of German school kids by saying "and this cabin was built in ... 1905!" She didn't quite get the reaction she was hoping for.
My house was built in 1907. It's not an historic landmark or anything, it's just an ordinary house in a small town in Washington state. Are you sure that cabin wasn't built in 1805, or 1705?
@@dwaneanderson8039 I can't even remember the guys' name, and the whole thing was 30 years ago. I am fairly certain though that the guide said 1905 because I remember thinking at the time "half of the houses in my home town are older than that".
Possible that it was of particular interest not because it was "old" but because it belonged to that famous pioneer whose name I can't remember- we did see a statue of a guy named Paul Bunyan a few hours later in Bemidji but I'm sure that wasn't it 😁
LOL - it was fun visiting museums in New Zealand, because some of the old artifacts they had appeared to have been from the same production run as possessions my grandparents had.
My Dad was stationed in Germany in the late 70s. We lived off-base for a while in a house over 400 years old. My Dad is over six foot and had to duck under the front door and beams in the ceiling.
A lot of people do not understand our "love affair" with motor vehicles. They just have no idea what it feels like to just get into a car and head down the road to somewhere hours or maybe even days away. I do love a good road trip.
The same reason they don't understand why Americans like big cars. If you're going to be traveling for 8 hours in a car with a couple of kids, do you want to ride in a station wagon or SUV, or do you want to ride in a FIAT or Mini Cooper?
Having grown up in Colorado, and having traveled through the state as well as multiple states, I knew how big the country is, but I was fascinated by how big LA is when I moved to California. I used to read about different cities such as Redondo Beach, LA, and Pasadena, and think "oh, those are separate cities", and then I found out it's all one giant Megalopolis. I also remember driving over the Sepulveda Pass for the first time, and thinking I was leaving LA, and then I saw the San Fernando valley, which stretched to the horizon, and thought "damn, this is a big city".
Yea, LA is a weird beast when it comes to city proper.
@@TickleMeElmo55 Does it actually have a city proper or is Los Angeles just a county? The county is huge. I tend to refer to it as "the LA area."
I haven't properly compared DC and its suburbs to LA and its suburbs, but DC definitely changed my definition of urban sprawl once I got here. It just doesn't stop. x.x
@@AdmiringObserverR Los Angeles is a definite city with definite boundaries.
Lawrence Thank you! I thoroughly enjoy your programs. You are not just educating your Brit viewers. But teaching us Americans a thing or three about our own country as well.
Love the videos you make! When I was about 13 My family was in the Smokies for vacation and at the campground, I remember there were about 10 adults bent over a map of the USA on a picnic table loudly arguing. My dad spoke some German so recognized what they were speaking and finally sussed out that they were planning to go from the Smokies to the Rockies in less than a week. Wow. I could not understand how they thought the USA was so small.
A note about the size of metro areas...as you showed on the map, the census-defined metro areas in the US are county-wide, so often the urban area of a city is significantly smaller than the metro area. Sometimes, like in Jacksonville's case, the urban area is smaller than the city limits. I live in Duluth, MN, a small-mid-sized city on the Western tip of Lake Superior. Duluth's metro area is, officially, St. Louis County (Minnesota's largest county by area), Lake County and Carlton County, MN and Douglas County, WI which adds up to 10,522 sq. miles. The urban area, if Wikipedia is to be trusted (and I think this estimate is close), is about 80 sq. miles.
I've lived all over the US. When my dad was stationed at Nellis AFB in Las Vegas we would "regularly" make the trek back to southwestern PA to visit family. That is about a 2200 mile trip. My parents would tag team the drive and we'd make it in under 40 hours including all restroom, food, and gas stops. Not bad considering when we did this I was in the age span of 5-9 and my brother was 1-4. We also made the drive to and from southwestern PA to Olympia, WA. That was a 2700 mile trek. We didn't make any visits because my dad got out of the AF after 1 year in WA, but both times we made that trip we made it in a large moving truck.
I grew up in Texas where the cities of Austin and San Antonio felt like they were practically continuous since they were only a 1-hour drive apart (not including travel time within each city). Now I live in a country where you can pass through 4 towns in a 30-minute train ride with no visual hint that one town has ended or another has begun.
One thing that I have noticed while driving from state to state, is how much the dirt changes. Like travelling from north east to south west you can see the dirt become more red over time and its kinda cool.