that's a good observation. by default, we're just used to measuring distances in time rather than miles. The only time i can think i might use miles is if someone specifically asks "how many miles away is that from here?" rather than "how far is it from here?" to which i reply using time
It’s also a part of American culture valuing time a commodity second to only money. Time off, time to relax, time away, and time to yourself are all things people aspire to without recognizing the value they put on time. Thus leading to the hurried pace of life especially in densely populated areas.
I 100% agree with this, however, even my own mind got a little blown once I started traveling for work and realized that when I drove from Charlotte, NC to El Paso, TX, it took as long for me to get from Charlotte to the Louisiana/Texas border as it did from that same border to El Paso within the same state lol
In order to become a state, an area needed a certain number of citizens. Since the western regions were less populated, they needed to incorporate larger tracts of land to reach that number of people. That’s why those states are larger than the eastern ones.
@@citrusblast4372 Well, it was already part of the Constitution, but the Land Ordinance and Northwest Ordinance which came just a bit before it set the precedent. Jefferson was the one who principally wrote the Land Ordinance, if I recall correctly.
@@majoroz4876 Not an argument. You've literally wasted your time and mine by saying nothing. How about you explain what isn't true and why it isn't instead of being asinine?
@Green Warrior Monke Are you a mailman? Because first of all route sizes are incredibly varying in size. I've done routes as small as 46 miles and as large as 192 miles and there are routes much larger than that. Also the main point of my first response was to tell the guys the amount of ground you could cover in a relatively small (by American standards) county.
@@aniquinstark4347 well yes they can but for the most part the mail trucks are only used on the smaller routes. I use my own vehicle to deliver mail in as do most rural carriers.
I live in New England and when someone ask you how far away a place is, you answer in time, not miles. So if I want to go to from Boston to New York and someone asks how far it is, then you would say, “It’s about 4-4.5 hour drive. More meaningful to you know how long it’ll take you to get there rather than to know how many miles you’ll travel.
Not just a New England thing. Did this in southern California and it's a behavior I brought with me to northern Idaho. I suspect it boils down to budgets in fuel vs time. In places where they pay out the nose for fuel, they'd rate everything in distance rather than time because distance driven directly correlates to fuel consumed. If/when you don't care as much about how much fuel you're gonna burn to get there, only how long it takes you to get there, then time driven is how you'll rate the trip. It's also why you'll generally see the polar opposite when doing such drives in electric vehicles. We'll only get back to our usual mode of thinking on this when ubiquitous five minute full recharges become a Thing, and that's probably 30-50 years out.
Pretty sure that's true for most of the US. We do the same in VA. Even as a child when we went to Six Flags in GA, a guy at the gas station told us, "you guys must have missed an exit, it's about 20 minutes back the way you just came."
When you cross the Mississippi river there is a sign that says "speed limits will be strictly enforced" and they are all the way to California. You can drive on cruise control for hours, often 75 - 85 miles an hour. My GPS once went over 400 miles without an instruction to turn
not too long ago, i got on I-90 in Massachusetts and didn't stop except for fuel and one over nighter for like 2,200 miles. there was still a whole other time zone to drive across
@@oldgranite6467 Until about 15 years ago, an old story/joke was TRUE....... A guy asks, in a Boston bar, where to get THE BEST banana cream pie. He is told to get on I-90 west, turn left at the stoplight, go one block, turn left again, and the restaurant on the right side, in the middle of the block is THE PLACE. It was (still is) in Kellogg Idaho......but they finally put the interstate through town in the mid zips.
Well if you go much more than 75 mph on the 101 and a Highway Patrol officer sees you (assuming you're not in the fast lane either); expect to get ticketed.
Here in America you can often guess which region of the continent a person is from by their accent, but not always. The impression I get of England by contrast is they can tell which street of which town you were born in by how you pronounce words.
It used to be that American regional accents were accounted for by where in England the settlers emigrated from. The book is "American Pronunciation" by John Kenyon.
Theres a basic city accent that alot of people acquire. I am from New Orleans and I’ve gotten people asking here all my life where I am from. It only really comes out in certain words and maybe to someone from a very different part of the country.
Cruise control is a great invention, specifically when driving through states like Kansas. You can pretty much take a nap through Kansas on I-70 with cruise control and good alignment.
I live in west Virginia. All our roads are like snakes lol. No long straights. I went to Kentucky and close to Louisville I said you could fall asleep hold wheel straight and wake up still in your lane. Lol
As an American - I also thought New England was a bit bigger... But as an Expat, I've heard too many people plan a week trip and want to visit places across the states. They are always confused when I ask if they planned for traveling time.
I'm an American from the eastern side, where things are appropriately-sized, and I made the EXACT same mistake in Las Vegas. I thought I'd just go for a little walk. By the end, I was sure I was hearing a foghorn in the distance, but it was my nose whistling because of the incredible dry heat. It was miserable. 🤣🌵
I had a professor who grew up in Japan (roughly the size of CA) and years ago when her mother came here to WA for a visit her mom wanted to do a day trip: lunch in LA and dinner in NY.
Part of the reason the eastern states are smaller is because the were explored on foot and horseback. When the west was being settled they had rail and better surveying equipment, so they drew the border lines on latitude and longitude lines, resulting in those big rectangular states
The eastern states were also incentivized to make the western states as large as possible so they could maintain power over the western states in the Senate.
I always thought that they started eager and with lots of passion but started running out of names energy and ideas so they just phoned it in the rest of the way.
Alaska is my state, it takes FOREVER to cross this mfer, and you can't even go full speed this time of year because ice + cliffs. Edit: For those curious, I'm from Anchorage.
@@Tar-Numendil oh no, not this again... Right so a quick rundown. Do you know how some Texans always make a lot of fuss about leaving the union? It's kind of like that. It will be forever debated but never executed (though it should be). It's a common-sense move since everything is here, but after 50 years people are tired of hearing about it to the point we don't even care anymore.
Great video, as always! Also, just a weird trivia fact: “Tri-State” in the US is a relative term. For instance, it also popularly refers to Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana, or any region where three states are culturally, geographically, and economically inter-linked. 🙂
Being of Welsh ancestry I almost get offended that y’all keep ripping on Wales until I remember my great great grandfather sailed all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to America to leave it. 😂😂 It does seem beautiful there though.
@@DMWolFGurL I mean that it isn't particularly beautiful. I'm just being silly though, I'm sure that there are beautiful areas. I'm right next door in Manchester.
Although, as you say, populations tend to cluster, this is less true thing in the U.S. compared to other large countries. Russia -- mostly west; China -- mostly east; Brazil -- mostly along the east; Canada -- mostly along the border w/the U.S.; Australia -- a ring around the island/continent.
Ya China's population is even more crazy when you realize like 95% of the people live on like 40% of the land to the east. It's like 1 giant mega metropolitan area of over a billion people.
@@Skyl3t0n That's true for the entire world. Access to ocean navigation, coastal fisheries, tourism and recreation are the main reasons. And, over 50% of the world's population lives closer than 2 miles to a surface freshwater body, and only 10% of the population lives further than 6 miles away. Basically, wherever you find large bodies of water, you'll also find lots of people.
Houston is absolutely massive, it's one of the 5 biggest cities in the US population wise. They gained a ton of population following Hurricane Katrina as well.
It is also number 3 by metropolitan area at 21,395 km^2 the two larger metro areas being Dallas and Atlanta. Those three are also the largest metro areas on the planet, though there are a few cities not defined as part of a metro area that are larger still. Quite the accomplishment anyway, crossing Houston repeatedly as a rideshare driver was stressful as hell because of the long distances.
@@Alvin-xs7db They showed up here in Austin for a bit, but they cannot compete with imported Manuel labor, lower wages, and high housing. . . so many have already migrated back East. I imagine they'll eventually leave Houston as well. Imported labor from Mx is one of the only things that keeps S.Texas "Texan" in culture. There's a reason why no one from Texas moves into the SE. Austin has a bigger prob with Lefties from CA moving here. I'm not sure which is worse.
@@goldenhate6649 Imported labor from Mex will drive all those people back east. They simply cannot compete. Houston just needs to get more conservatives in office and reduce gov't handouts. If that happens, those people will haul 4ss back to Louisiana.
One of my favourite stories from my grandparents was about a couple that came to visit them here in Canada from England (before flights were common), they were transferring from their ship to the train traveling from Montreal to Vancouver when the wife said, "We should probably get a sandwich before we board the train in case it takes awhile!" A train trip from Montreal to Vancouver takes about 5 days. LOL! This is a massive continent.
Never really thought about how it might seem odd to other countries that we consider anything less than 5 hours or less...a day trip. It takes us about 2.5 hrs to get to my mom's and more often than not we just stay a few hours and then drive 2.5 hrs back home.
We rarely flew anywhere when I was a kid. Our trips and vacations were road trips. It took 12+ hours to drive from the northern border of Texas down to Galveston (the southern border just past Houston). I saw that stretch of road many a time from the back of a station wagon. It still wasn't as boring as driving across Kansas to Colorado. We made that trip a few times as well. It definitely seemed longer because aside from fields of various grains there wasn't anything to see or to look forward to seeing.
Geez when you say northern Texas are you talking about in the panhandle? From where I live in central Arkansas just outside Little Rock to Houston/Galveston isn’t even 12 hours! It’s still a long-ass drive though.
I've driven a couple of round trips across Interstate10 from Tallahassee, Florida to the Pacific Coast Highway. Going west from San Antonio, Texas all the way to Palm Springs, California can best be described as miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles. But, the colors of the sunset can make the long, straight, boring, empty miles worth it every day of the days' long trip.
Yea I live in El Paso so any other major city like Tuscon, Albuquerque or San Antonio are at least 4 hours away. Trips during my youth were always driven so I got used to the 10+ hours to go to places like Dallas or Denver
Yea Alaska only has around 730,000 people due to it being mostly uninhabitable, Jacksonville has around 890,000 people while San Bernadino county has around 2.18 million. And if somebody is on their 5th dui they’ve definitely gone through the system, they’ve more than likely done time in jail and paid some heavy fines but it does depend on the individual state.
The United States has such a varied topography that even within the lower 48 states you can find almost all of a geology textbook without once leaving. Mountains, canyons (one in particular we feel is rather Grand), swamps, marshes, prairies, deserts, beaches (from Tropical up to Brighton in winter), (excluding the Caspian Sea) the largest inland lake in the world (bordered with Canada) and it's 4 smaller brothers (also bordering with Canada), Volcanos, glaciers,...etc. New Orleans is below seal level and Denver is a mile above sea level. As far as distance to work, I have had several jobs in which my daily drive was 45-50 miles or one hour drive time. I have known people with twice as long though.
Also both the wettest and dryest parts of the world are allocated in the US. Mindfully noting though that the rainforest biome is not found within the continental US.
I drive a truck (freightliner usually) 500 - 600 miles per day in the western US. There are really long stretches where almost nobody lives. Most of it is beautiful . . . right up until you have to put snow chains on six tires.
I'm a Utah native and have lived here almost all my life. I moved briefly to the east coast, Delaware to be specific- for about 6 years. It was REALLY difficult to describe to people what remote places were like in my State, it was almost surreal to them. Great video.
My family and I made bi-yearly trips from Arizona to Michigan. If we trade drivers and don't stop at a hotel/motel/rest stop then we can make it in a little less than 36 hours this is including bathroom/meal/gas(petrol) breaks :) we stayed for max 3 weeks each trip.
I am an American who has done half country road trips (Dallas to Orlando), and I NEVER use cruise control for anything but road trips. I could use it sometimes for highways in Dallas, but I never think to. By the way, did Dallas to Orlando (1090 mi, 1750 km) in about 18 hours, from early morning to arriving at about 2am in Orlando.
I went to visit a friend in Stockholm and, coming from LA, I didn't realize how compact the city was. The central station was easy enough to find, but going to a particular location in the city posed a couple of problems for me. The first was that how ever I thought the street names are pronounced, I was always waaaay off. So asking directions was useless. The second was that even though I knew I was walking in the right direction, I would sometimes pass my desired location by almost 3/4 miles before I realized it because my brain was working in LA dimensions.
My go-to stat for comparing the size of the US and UK: a round trip covering the full length of A1 (410 miles each way, from London to Edinburgh and back) is shorter than the trip from El Paso to Beaumont on I-10 just in Texas (about 830 miles). And that's only 1/3 of the full length of I-10 (2,460 miles between Los Angeles and Jacksonville), and I-10 is only the fourth-longest interstate highway (I-90, from Seattle to Boston, runs a bit over 3,000 miles). The areas of some of the cities and metro areas he mentioned are a bit misleading - the city limits of Juneau extend about 100 miles along the coast and 30 miles inland, but the vast majority of the population is in a few square miles between Auke Bay and Mendenhall Lake plus maybe a square mile or so around downtown, and what little else there is is almost all on the middle half of the coast. Similarly, the San Bernadino metro is huge in area because metro areas are generally denoted by counties, and San Bernadino and Riverside Counties both include a huge area of desert. The vast majority of the population is in the southwest corner of San Bernadino and northwest corner of Riverside, with about a half million in the Coachella Valley (central Riverside County) and not much in the east.
Don’t quote me on this, but I think the reason states started out so small on the east coast was because the large Appalachian Mountains prevented many people from reaching the other parts of the unexplored land so they settled in those first territories
I'm from upstate New York, in the Appalachian mountains. They're barely mountains at all, due to how old they are. There's even a walking trail that runs through them from Georgia in the south to Maine in the north, so they're not that difficult to navigate through. Maybe you're thinking of the Rocky Mountains?
@@copo2835 you havent been to the lower parts of appalachia then. sure theyre not the rockies but with how things are in my area im completely certain that the many many hills and dense forests were definitely more than enough to slow early travel back when they had only horse and buggies and no roads. theyre also why theres not a lot of big cities in appalachia, cities tend to crop up in areas with flat land and you can drive for miles and miles out here and feel like youre on a rollercoaster with all the ups and downs and curves there are.
The blonde dude says they found the small states first then moved westword. No they conquered stole and Slaughter the natives. Then they brought Africans over to do all the work. When the Europeans got here they didn't even know how to farm the natives taught them that and then they slaughtered them purposely gave them smallpox systematically slaughtered the American buffalo to starve out the Indians. Oh yeah and the name Indians was given to them the audacity of these people
When you are on a US highway and can look ahead of you and see the road going straight to the horizon you think I have a long way to go. And you check your fuel gauge. LOL
My brother asked me for help moving and I decided to drive out and make a road trip of it. Miami to Yuma Arizona, primarily, utilizes two interstate highways (I-75 and I-10). Those two roads will take you most of the 2500 mile trip. Two roads, 2500 miles.
A three hour road trip is pretty easy and standard for our family. We’ll drive over to family on the coast and it’s just under three hours. 7 hours is when I start to lose it. We used to have to drive from Central California to Las Vegas pretty regularly, and it could get pretty brutal. 7 hours in a car is my max these days. More than that and I’m finding a motel for the night.
I can remember *many* a time, just in the last 2 years, that if I only had to go 100 miles, I'd of been thrilled. I've never driven the entire length of the US, but Massachusetts to Colorado was enough 1,930 miles. Connecticut to south Florida was no quick little romp either. 1400 miles. That trip really sucks because you're driving the eastern seaboard. Not to mention, you get to Florida thinking "I'm in Florida!!!" 6 hours later.....
Live in the MidWest. Many years ago, my dad's office had a Brit over on a special project for 2 weeks. He was telling my dad he planned to rent a car for the weekend and go see Disney. When my dad and another coworker explained it was over 20 hours to drive one way, he was rather heartbroken.
About a year ago I took a road trip with a friend from Durango Colorado, to Sedona AZ, then Big Bend in TX, and finally drove for 18 hours from southwest Texas to Nashville stopping for only gas. The whole trip was a hair over 2,600 miles, about the same as driving from Paris to Moscow. And that was only a small part of the US.
The size of America is one of the reasons politics is so different over here. For example. Guns. When citizens are spread out and so many live in gigantic rural areas where it takes police 30 plus minutes to respond, having a self defense weapon can be the difference between life and death. America’s size and federalist state structure also explains why we use the electoral college. There are many things like this that I’ve noticed folks over in the UK have a hard time understanding.
I remember living in Atlanta area and my commute to work was about 65 miles one way. It took 1 1/2 hours to get to work each day. I hated it. I did move to the Jacksonville area and although there is not much traffic, everything is so spread out that it take about 30 to 45 minutes to get some places.
Block size is usually pretty uniform within a given city, but can vary widely from one city to another. A common size is gauged at 10 blocks/mile. However, some (e.g. Salt Lake City, Utah) have 8 blocks/mile…and some (like Seattle, Washington I think?) have 20 blocks/mile 💐
One of the best trips I've taken is a family road trip from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to Los Angeles, California. The trip took 3 1/2 days covering 2,650+ miles and the best part was to see just how the country changes from the east, to the mid-west, to the west. It was well worth it.
Questions because that sounds really cool to do: 1. Did you ride through the states nonstop? 2. Rough cost estimate? 3. Is there a difference between the terrain of the midwest and west? I 've always thought they were similar?
@@kev792 The trip lasted a total of 10 days from June 22nd to July 1st in 2018. 1. It took 3 and a half days to drive from Pennsylvania to Southern California and just as long to drive back. The first night, we stopped in Le Claire, Iowa, the second night was in Brighton, Colorado, and the third night was in Las Vegas, Nevada. I drove the same route back, but stopped at Grand Junction, Colorado for the first night, Lincoln, Nebraska the second night, and South Bend, Indiana the third night. 2. The total trip? I budgeted $3,000 for the entire trip with $1,100 in hotels (three and a half days in California), $600 in fuel, and $600 in food. I always like to have more than I anticipate and prepared for the trip for a few years. 3. We stayed on I-80 until we reached the end of Nebraska were it split and took I-76. The eastern part of the mid-west, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, seemed to be very similar to Pennsylvania. Some rolling hills, a few small mountains, greenery, and more trees. Once we hit western Iowa and into Nebraska, it started to flatten out and had green prairies. Colorado has nearly every type of terrain from rolling prairies in the east, the Rockies in the middle, and the start of the desert in the southwest. We took I-70 in Denver to I-15 in Utah and that's were the terrain changed a lot. Southwestern Colorado was much more humid and had more and more desert, except for some sparse green areas. For the most part, it stayed this was until we got closer the the western part of southern California. One thing that was surprising to my kids was in the early morning at the hotel in Brighton, Colorado, it was about 60 degrees. We stopped at the Vail Pass rest area just off of I-70 (about 30 minutes from the hotel, in the mountains) at it dipped to 39 degrees and by the time we arrived in Las Vegas that evening, it was 109 degrees. It might not be too different, but for me and not being out there in 30 years, it was pretty different.
@@northofknowhere130 Sounds awesome! I might try to do a trip in the future when I get to save some extra cash. And Colorado sounds really interesting! Thanks for sharing!
One of major reasons for size difference in East was the survey system and methods used early on that relied on geographical boundaries such as rivers, lakes etc. As the movement progressed the survey methods and equipment improved and a rectangular system of survey, or township and range, became more expedient. East of Mississippi, county size for several states was set by transportation available during those times. Horse and wagon. The county seat where the county courthouse was located, had to be on average no more than a day's wagon ride. People could conduct their business in the county records office like birth and death records, record deeds etc.
I live in California. I one made a 650 mile round trip from Merced to San Diego and back in one day. These two cities are both in California. Took about 12 -13 hours. The strangest thing is, I remember taking the journey, but I don’t remember why I did it, or why I needed to turn around and go back on the same day.
Being a New Englander, I find it interesting that we are bigger than England. Connecticut originally spread to the Pacific Ocean, but no one knew how far away it was. Cleveland, Ohio was first settled by Connecticut migrants who were exploring the Northwest Territories (Ohio at the time).
I was born in CA (San Bernardino county). I lived in East Anglia (RAF Mildenhall). I used to drive to London and thought nothing of it. Driving to Arizona took longer.
Last time I was in Vegas, the people I was with wanted to walk the full strip to the Stratosphere. Bad idea. Was almost there, but they chickened out & my feet ached so much, I demanded we take a taxi back. Lesson learned.
I live in Las Vegas and I tell visitors hotels are farther than they appear. The shear size of them gives the illusion of closeness. The good news is there are bars every 20 feet to freshen up! (Ok, I made that one up, but not by much)
As someone who lived in San Bernardino county for years and years, I can assure you that it's pretty much a frying pan with some dirt in it and freeway congestion.
Wyoming is wild because it is 3 percent larger than the UK and yet the UK has 67.33 *million people*! *Meanwhile* Wyoming has, as of the most recent census, only 578,803. That's 0.0085965097282044% the population size. And most of that is spread about as only Cheyenne and Casper have a population north of 50k and that next 2, Gillete and Laramie, are roughly 31-33k respectively. Theres liiterally a town called Lost Springs and its population peaked in 1910 with a population of 207 and is now *6*
Mark 3:34. I must be the exception! Not being into Math, for it depresses me for one thing, "100 Miles", would discourage me. Especially now that I'm not supposed to drive long distances because of my sleeping disorder. Well, fairly recently, I needed to take a poor, blind baby mouse, that I rescued from my, Chihuahuas, to a wildlife sanctuary. When trying to make arrangements for getting it from here to there, the distance sounded like a difficult risk. But then he mentioned it in relation to time, and how it was only forty minutes away! My perspective changed! I used to commute to work on a nightly basis, and going there at night, always seemed quick and easy, compared to driving home in sunlight, when it felt like it was taking an Eternity, what with Relativity and all of that. Well, driving to the shelter, didn't take as long as driving back. The place even turned out to be the same place that I took a rescued baby beaver, back in the 1990s. Driving back, I kept making wrong turns, because it all looked familiar to me, because I had been there before, so I didn't feel lost. But making adjustments for course corrections, it was still a relatively short time. It was seeing the miles accumulate that made it seem like an ordeal. Especially if I might need to refuel sooner, because of the course corrections. But yeah, depending on a driver's personal perceptions and preference, saying how far in distance versus how much time, can make a big difference! 😁
I Commute from Arizona to California on a biweekly basis And it's over 229 miles to hear you guys talking about 26 miles is wild lol. Love you guys though
Mark 5:55. I once saw a school video of math problems, that had a funny one about a man's commute to work being longer than to home, because of so many, one way streets. 😳
It is closer from the California - Arizona border to El Paso (530 miles) than from El Paso to San Antonio (565 miles) which is the next closest major city.
We consider 200 miles to be "local" lol! Live in Roswell, New Mexico USA! Drove 100 miles to college and the 100 miles back home 5 days a week for 4 years!
I worked with my Uncle doing land survey in Minnesota, there most towns have a block size of 100 yards by 100 yards . The plat of the streets is 10 yards width giving a standard of sixteen blocks to hte linear mile and 256 blocks in a square mile. SO the standard block including streets is about 1 hectare or exactly 2.5 acres.
block size is a difference per town and village for example the grandmas town one block was 1/16 of a mile while the town i went to college in was 10 per mile
This is how I felt as an American when I moved to China, and worked in a city of 30 million people that few Non-Chinese have even heard of. (That city is Chongqing, that number is the metro area, not the downtown core).
really cool to see my home county and metro area represented San Bernardino county is indeed huge and riverside county is nothing to sneeze at either. great part of the state of California.
It's videos like Lawrence's (Lost in the Pond) and this that I wish Europeans and Americans would watch before they comment, "what would you know, you've probably never left your state, let alone visited another country!"
Walking in Las Vegas: Oh god I made the same mistake. Thank you staff at the off Strip casino bar for not letting us walk anymore when we came in for water! Everything is Las Vegas is huge so it doesn't look that far. Just ride the Deuce and stay on the Strip unless you specifically want to go to Fremont Street/outlet shopping/to a gun range/whatever. Your hotel will have shuttles for most of that. Really, please don't walk. It is hot enough there to put you in the hospital or worse if you're foolish about it at the wrong time of year. On the day it happened to me it was 45C (114F).
My daily drive my senior year of highschool was around 70 miles, about 30 of which was fairly crap dirt and gravel, curvy country roads through a canyon. Days or week + long family road trips are part of life here from about as early as you can remember.
My family moved to Virginia from California a couple years ago. It's closer to where I came from, so we can visit my mom and siblings in Ohio far more easily. We just have to cross Virginia, West Virginia, and part of Ohio to get there. But the trip takes us 10 hours. Better than the 5 days it used to take, I guess.
One of my favorite songs from Great Britain back in the days was Big Country by a band with the same name...we thought it weird they sung a song called big country coming from such a small country..In a Big country dreams stay with you, like a lovers voice on a mountain side...
The sheer size of the U.S. and our economic and military power makes it much less likely for a U.S. citizen to travel internationally, speak a foreign language, or have the same degree of concern for world events and international opinion about the U.S. that most people in the world would have. If you live in Europe, you can easily get to several other countries quickly and relatively cheaply. It might be worth your while to learn a language to get a better job or go to university in a country only a few hours away by car from where your family currently lives. This is much less likely in the U.S. Unlike in the U.S., relations with these nearby countries could have a vast effect on your own country's economy. In much of the world (though probably not so much in Europe), military situations involving nearby countries is a huge concern. These things are just not really as much of an issue for U.S. citizens. I've even encountered fellow American citizens bemoaning how the average American is so ignorant of world events/geography compared to Europeans, but they don't stop to ask themselves why or even whether or not we should care as much as the rest of the world does about such things.
You were talking about the small size of the eastern states versus the rest. In the colonial days, virtually all transport between the settlements was done by sea. Going inland required rivers. The size of the West required the railroads. To put it in context, consider historical travel times. A person wishing to travel today from St. Louis to San Francisco could do so by air in 4-5 hours. In the late 1800s, it required perhaps 4-7 days by river steamboat and rail. In 1850, during the California Gold Rush, that trip lasted 5-6 months on foot across the continent accompanied by a wagon full of food, or about the same duration on a sailing ship around the tip of South America.
I am a parts runner for a total of 4 coal mines and my average daily milage is around 400 miles a day...and that is Southern Indiana and Illinois mostly...from where I live it takes a half an hour to get to my first pick up and then depending on where I have to go it can be a two and an half hour drive to deliver parts and then back an hour to pick up more and another hour to deliver those and then another hour to pick up the next ones...I guess you get my point...just in two states it takes me around 12 hours a day to get everything delivered.
For 15 years, I drove 25 miles each way to work. Never thought anything of it except when the roads were nearly impassible in the winter and it might take 2 hours to get to work.
I live in southern New England (Rhode Island) we don't do blocks. Cities were settled and roads made before grid systems and suburbs have winding streets to have a more pleasing effect.
I remember in college it was 45 minutes to school, then an hour and some to work, and after, 30 minutes back home. If it's less than an hour trip I dont sweat it. Most things (church, friends, good restaurants) are around 45 minutes away. I remember when my friend was going to college in Indiana I would drive out there if he had a show or something. It's about 32 hours round trip from Upstate New York to where he was, more time driving than we actually got to spend together lol.
All I know is that I have to cross just ONE state (Georgia) to reach Florida and yet to drive from the coast of South Carolina just to Miami, Florida is a solid 12-hours! And another 3 hours to reach Key West.
If you want to see a perfect metropolitan grid, check out Phoenix, AZ metro area. As its population explosion was in early 90s, it was planned in 1mile by 1mile superblocks.
Blocks tend to be roughly similar sizes in a given area, but can be vastly different in different areas, for instance in the more urban areas you usually get a large number of blocks in a mile, but in the more rural areas it's not rare to have blocks be miles long
I used to commute 100 miles each morning to work, and of course the same to get home. I traveled from my home in central Mississippi, to my job in ... central Mississippi. Luckily, I drove a Cadillac Fleetwood. It was a basically a one and one half hour ride on a magic carpet - with a radio. After a few months, I started a new job that was only seventy miles away. It still took the same time, since it was on backroads. If you ever come across a '93 Fleetwood - buy it!
I live at the top of Indiana, and a couple of summers ago I drove 9 hours at about 70mph one way to pick up a cat for transport to my city. I drove straight there got a hotel, slept, woke up got the cat and immediately left to drive back 9 hours home lol. When we go on vacation to Florida, It takes us about 28 hours to get there driving non-stop. It take about 5 hours to get halfway through Florida once we cross the state line..........
As someone was born in and lived in San Bernardino county for 25 years, it's truly hard to explain just how dense yet widespread of an area it is. You can drive for well over two hours and see nothing but city and suburbia, and you'd have no clue you were travelling between different cities unless you were looking at freeway signs. it's like a Judge Dredd megacity but mostly horizontal.
Yes, it would be a part of the Los Angeles Megalopolis. including L.A. County, Riverside, Orange and Ventura counties as well. truly massive. and the county itself...is unbelievably large.
I live in New England. Massachusetts to be exact. I've travelled and lived all over the US. I drove from Chicago to Orlando non stop in 27 hours, lol. I arrived on Friday at 7pm ready to go out and party.
Due to traffic and population density differences across the US, I often explain how far something is away in terms of hours rather than miles.
that's a good observation. by default, we're just used to measuring distances in time rather than miles. The only time i can think i might use miles is if someone specifically asks "how many miles away is that from here?" rather than "how far is it from here?" to which i reply using time
It’s also a part of American culture valuing time a commodity second to only money. Time off, time to relax, time away, and time to yourself are all things people aspire to without recognizing the value they put on time. Thus leading to the hurried pace of life especially in densely populated areas.
I 100% agree with this, however, even my own mind got a little blown once I started traveling for work and realized that when I drove from Charlotte, NC to El Paso, TX, it took as long for me to get from Charlotte to the Louisiana/Texas border as it did from that same border to El Paso within the same state lol
If you are driving to LA from Texarkana, TX when you hit El Paso you are halfway.
Distance is always measured by time when driving
In order to become a state, an area needed a certain number of citizens. Since the western regions were less populated, they needed to incorporate larger tracts of land to reach that number of people. That’s why those states are larger than the eastern ones.
Damn so thats how they took the land... Who came up with that rule anyway?
@@citrusblast4372 Well, it was already part of the Constitution, but the Land Ordinance and Northwest Ordinance which came just a bit before it set the precedent. Jefferson was the one who principally wrote the Land Ordinance, if I recall correctly.
Not true.
In other terms they were illegally trusted into the Union and not paid for in their first ever proxy war against Mexico
@@majoroz4876 Not an argument. You've literally wasted your time and mine by saying nothing. How about you explain what isn't true and why it isn't instead of being asinine?
As a mailman in the United States I regularly drive between 150-200 miles a day six days a week, and that is just a relatively small part of a county.
Put into perspective, the US is about 2900 miles across (give or take) to drive. (Actually straight globe distance is ~2550)
@Green Warrior Monke Are you a mailman? Because first of all route sizes are incredibly varying in size. I've done routes as small as 46 miles and as large as 192 miles and there are routes much larger than that. Also the main point of my first response was to tell the guys the amount of ground you could cover in a relatively small (by American standards) county.
Those trucks must have an insane number of miles on them.
@@aniquinstark4347 well yes they can but for the most part the mail trucks are only used on the smaller routes. I use my own vehicle to deliver mail in as do most rural carriers.
Thanks for what you do!!
I live in New England and when someone ask you how far away a place is, you answer in time, not miles. So if I want to go to from Boston to New York and someone asks how far it is, then you would say, “It’s about 4-4.5 hour drive. More meaningful to you know how long it’ll take you to get there rather than to know how many miles you’ll travel.
Absolutely! 🖐 from Rhode Island
Not just a New England thing. Did this in southern California and it's a behavior I brought with me to northern Idaho.
I suspect it boils down to budgets in fuel vs time. In places where they pay out the nose for fuel, they'd rate everything in distance rather than time because distance driven directly correlates to fuel consumed. If/when you don't care as much about how much fuel you're gonna burn to get there, only how long it takes you to get there, then time driven is how you'll rate the trip.
It's also why you'll generally see the polar opposite when doing such drives in electric vehicles. We'll only get back to our usual mode of thinking on this when ubiquitous five minute full recharges become a Thing, and that's probably 30-50 years out.
Pretty sure that's true for most of the US. We do the same in VA. Even as a child when we went to Six Flags in GA, a guy at the gas station told us, "you guys must have missed an exit, it's about 20 minutes back the way you just came."
When you cross the Mississippi river there is a sign that says "speed limits will be strictly enforced" and they are all the way to California. You can drive on cruise control for hours, often 75 - 85 miles an hour. My GPS once went over 400 miles without an instruction to turn
not too long ago, i got on I-90 in Massachusetts and didn't stop except for fuel and one over nighter for like 2,200 miles. there was still a whole other time zone to drive across
@@oldgranite6467 yea i travel for work. I do conservation yea sometimes you never gotta turn. Drove thousand miles in a day without a single turn.
I made a trip from San Francisco ca to Galveston tx in 3 days
@@oldgranite6467 Until about 15 years ago, an old story/joke was TRUE.......
A guy asks, in a Boston bar, where to get THE BEST banana cream pie. He is told to get on I-90 west, turn left at the stoplight, go one block, turn left again, and the restaurant on the right side, in the middle of the block is THE PLACE.
It was (still is) in Kellogg Idaho......but they finally put the interstate through town in the mid zips.
Well if you go much more than 75 mph on the 101 and a Highway Patrol officer sees you (assuming you're not in the fast lane either); expect to get ticketed.
Here in America you can often guess which region of the continent a person is from by their accent, but not always. The impression I get of England by contrast is they can tell which street of which town you were born in by how you pronounce words.
It used to be that American regional accents were accounted for by where in England the settlers emigrated from. The book is "American Pronunciation" by John Kenyon.
Theres a basic city accent that alot of people acquire. I am from New Orleans and I’ve gotten people asking here all my life where I am from. It only really comes out in certain words and maybe to someone from a very different part of the country.
If they are from Manchester they speak shit 😂🤣😂
I’m going to assume you meant country and not continent because the United States of America isn’t a continent.
@@marcom6089 Autocorrect continues to not be my friend. 🤣🤣
Cruise control is a great invention, specifically when driving through states like Kansas. You can pretty much take a nap through Kansas on I-70 with cruise control and good alignment.
This is so true lol
I’m from Kansas and can confirm… lol
😂 except for the winter time
@@amazonmuhkah lol true because you’re not getting through lol
I live in west Virginia. All our roads are like snakes lol. No long straights. I went to Kentucky and close to Louisville I said you could fall asleep hold wheel straight and wake up still in your lane. Lol
As an American - I also thought New England was a bit bigger... But as an Expat, I've heard too many people plan a week trip and want to visit places across the states. They are always confused when I ask if they planned for traveling time.
one would think, new york and new jersey would be a part....
I'm an American from the eastern side, where things are appropriately-sized, and I made the EXACT same mistake in Las Vegas. I thought I'd just go for a little walk. By the end, I was sure I was hearing a foghorn in the distance, but it was my nose whistling because of the incredible dry heat. It was miserable. 🤣🌵
GA native here Ive spent time in the desert and I gota say its way better than dealin with humidity.
I had a professor who grew up in Japan (roughly the size of CA) and years ago when her mother came here to WA for a visit her mom wanted to do a day trip: lunch in LA and dinner in NY.
@@Blondie42 she better have a private jet
@@joebungus3447 And a very, very fast one. 🛩
Or a Star Trek teleporter 😉
🤣🤣🤣🤣 yup.
Bus pass!!!!!
Part of the reason the eastern states are smaller is because the were explored on foot and horseback. When the west was being settled they had rail and better surveying equipment, so they drew the border lines on latitude and longitude lines, resulting in those big rectangular states
Damn I live in Rhode Island the smallest state and just learned this hahahah
They wished they had rail to explore it!🤣
The eastern states were also incentivized to make the western states as large as possible so they could maintain power over the western states in the Senate.
A lot of it has to do with terrain as well. West of the Mississippi is flat flat flat
I always thought that they started eager and with lots of passion but started running out of names energy and ideas so they just phoned it in the rest of the way.
Alaska is my state, it takes FOREVER to cross this mfer, and you can't even go full speed this time of year because ice + cliffs. Edit: For those curious, I'm from Anchorage.
Is it nice up there? I've always wanted to visit
@@kev792 It's very white lol
@@Kjetilstorm 😂
I heard something about the capital being moved from Juneau to Anchorage. I wonder if there was any truth to it.
@@Tar-Numendil oh no, not this again... Right so a quick rundown. Do you know how some Texans always make a lot of fuss about leaving the union? It's kind of like that. It will be forever debated but never executed (though it should be). It's a common-sense move since everything is here, but after 50 years people are tired of hearing about it to the point we don't even care anymore.
Great video, as always! Also, just a weird trivia fact: “Tri-State” in the US is a relative term. For instance, it also popularly refers to Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana, or any region where three states are culturally, geographically, and economically inter-linked. 🙂
Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana - all tied together by the greater Chicagoland area.
It's also regional within a state. In central and eastern NJ, it means NJ, NY, and CT. In the northwest parts, it means NJ, NY, and PA.
in South Jersey it means NJ, PA, and DE
@@Zaburino Never knew that, but I guess it should be expected.
@@Zaburino they say Pa is the keystone state, looking at it it’s really Jersey.
Being of Welsh ancestry I almost get offended that y’all keep ripping on Wales until I remember my great great grandfather sailed all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to America to leave it. 😂😂 It does seem beautiful there though.
I've never been to Wales but it looks so beautiful!!
@@emilywhitfield2780 I’ve been to Wales and it’s regular lol
@@justlooking1087 WTH is regular? Like regular unleaded gas? Regular loaf of white bread? WTH is regular?
@@DMWolFGurL I mean that it isn't particularly beautiful. I'm just being silly though, I'm sure that there are beautiful areas. I'm right next door in Manchester.
It is. I'm not Welsh but I lived fairly close to it, Bristol.
Although, as you say, populations tend to cluster, this is less true thing in the U.S. compared to other large countries. Russia -- mostly west; China -- mostly east; Brazil -- mostly along the east; Canada -- mostly along the border w/the U.S.; Australia -- a ring around the island/continent.
Ya China's population is even more crazy when you realize like 95% of the people live on like 40% of the land to the east. It's like 1 giant mega metropolitan area of over a billion people.
Did you ever see a map of population density in the US? The coasts are packing people.
@@Skyl3t0n Yeah, if you include the Great Lakes, 2/3 of the US lives within 100 miles of the coast.
@@Skyl3t0n That's true for the entire world. Access to ocean navigation, coastal fisheries, tourism and recreation are the main reasons.
And, over 50% of the world's population lives closer than 2 miles to a surface freshwater body, and only 10% of the population lives further than 6 miles away.
Basically, wherever you find large bodies of water, you'll also find lots of people.
The distance from Seattle to Miami is the same as the distance from London to Tehran, the capital of Iran.
Houston is absolutely massive, it's one of the 5 biggest cities in the US population wise. They gained a ton of population following Hurricane Katrina as well.
It is also number 3 by metropolitan area at 21,395 km^2 the two larger metro areas being Dallas and Atlanta. Those three are also the largest metro areas on the planet, though there are a few cities not defined as part of a metro area that are larger still. Quite the accomplishment anyway, crossing Houston repeatedly as a rideshare driver was stressful as hell because of the long distances.
That actually explains alot about why the city is no longer texan culture and is slowly turning into another LA.
@@goldenhate6649 as a Houstonian I can agree with that but I'd say much moreso Austin
@@Alvin-xs7db They showed up here in Austin for a bit, but they cannot compete with imported Manuel labor, lower wages, and high housing. . . so many have already migrated back East. I imagine they'll eventually leave Houston as well. Imported labor from Mx is one of the only things that keeps S.Texas "Texan" in culture. There's a reason why no one from Texas moves into the SE. Austin has a bigger prob with Lefties from CA moving here. I'm not sure which is worse.
@@goldenhate6649 Imported labor from Mex will drive all those people back east. They simply cannot compete. Houston just needs to get more conservatives in office and reduce gov't handouts. If that happens, those people will haul 4ss back to Louisiana.
One of my favourite stories from my grandparents was about a couple that came to visit them here in Canada from England (before flights were common), they were transferring from their ship to the train traveling from Montreal to Vancouver when the wife said, "We should probably get a sandwich before we board the train in case it takes awhile!"
A train trip from Montreal to Vancouver takes about 5 days. LOL!
This is a massive continent.
Never really thought about how it might seem odd to other countries that we consider anything less than 5 hours or less...a day trip. It takes us about 2.5 hrs to get to my mom's and more often than not we just stay a few hours and then drive 2.5 hrs back home.
We rarely flew anywhere when I was a kid. Our trips and vacations were road trips. It took 12+ hours to drive from the northern border of Texas down to Galveston (the southern border just past Houston). I saw that stretch of road many a time from the back of a station wagon. It still wasn't as boring as driving across Kansas to Colorado. We made that trip a few times as well. It definitely seemed longer because aside from fields of various grains there wasn't anything to see or to look forward to seeing.
Geez when you say northern Texas are you talking about in the panhandle? From where I live in central Arkansas just outside Little Rock to Houston/Galveston isn’t even 12 hours! It’s still a long-ass drive though.
I've driven a couple of round trips across Interstate10 from Tallahassee, Florida to the Pacific Coast Highway. Going west from San Antonio, Texas all the way to Palm Springs, California can best be described as miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles. But, the colors of the sunset can make the long, straight, boring, empty miles worth it every day of the days' long trip.
Kansas is rough
Yea I live in El Paso so any other major city like Tuscon, Albuquerque or San Antonio are at least 4 hours away. Trips during my youth were always driven so I got used to the 10+ hours to go to places like Dallas or Denver
Yea Alaska only has around 730,000 people due to it being mostly uninhabitable, Jacksonville has around 890,000 people while San Bernadino county has around 2.18 million. And if somebody is on their 5th dui they’ve definitely gone through the system, they’ve more than likely done time in jail and paid some heavy fines but it does depend on the individual state.
The United States has such a varied topography that even within the lower 48 states you can find almost all of a geology textbook without once leaving. Mountains, canyons (one in particular we feel is rather Grand), swamps, marshes, prairies, deserts, beaches (from Tropical up to Brighton in winter), (excluding the Caspian Sea) the largest inland lake in the world (bordered with Canada) and it's 4 smaller brothers (also bordering with Canada), Volcanos, glaciers,...etc. New Orleans is below seal level and Denver is a mile above sea level. As far as distance to work, I have had several jobs in which my daily drive was 45-50 miles or one hour drive time. I have known people with twice as long though.
Also both the wettest and dryest parts of the world are allocated in the US. Mindfully noting though that the rainforest biome is not found within the continental US.
@@grigori7834 We've got a temperate rainforest here in Washington on the Olympic peninsula.
@@lamer5799
Thanks for learning me something new chief
You are talking about the Grand Canyon of the Snake River, I presume?
There are no jungles in the US but the Louisiana Bayou comes close.
I drive a truck (freightliner usually) 500 - 600 miles per day in the western US. There are really long stretches where almost nobody lives. Most of it is beautiful . . . right up until you have to put snow chains on six tires.
I'm a Utah native and have lived here almost all my life. I moved briefly to the east coast, Delaware to be specific- for about 6 years. It was REALLY difficult to describe to people what remote places were like in my State, it was almost surreal to them. Great video.
My family and I made bi-yearly trips from Arizona to Michigan. If we trade drivers and don't stop at a hotel/motel/rest stop then we can make it in a little less than 36 hours this is including bathroom/meal/gas(petrol) breaks :) we stayed for max 3 weeks each trip.
I am an American who has done half country road trips (Dallas to Orlando), and I NEVER use cruise control for anything but road trips. I could use it sometimes for highways in Dallas, but I never think to. By the way, did Dallas to Orlando (1090 mi, 1750 km) in about 18 hours, from early morning to arriving at about 2am in Orlando.
Was that only stopping for fuel? I am about to do Tampa to Austin in July. Am going to just split it into two 9 hour drives. Due to my stamina.
There are a lot of pictures online where they overlay the US onto Europe and it pretty much covers the whole thing.
City Blocks are normally one mile by one mile, with smaller blocks inside, and it makes it so you can calculate how far something is away easier
I went to visit a friend in Stockholm and, coming from LA, I didn't realize how compact the city was. The central station was easy enough to find, but going to a particular location in the city posed a couple of problems for me. The first was that how ever I thought the street names are pronounced, I was always waaaay off. So asking directions was useless. The second was that even though I knew I was walking in the right direction, I would sometimes pass my desired location by almost 3/4 miles before I realized it because my brain was working in LA dimensions.
My go-to stat for comparing the size of the US and UK: a round trip covering the full length of A1 (410 miles each way, from London to Edinburgh and back) is shorter than the trip from El Paso to Beaumont on I-10 just in Texas (about 830 miles). And that's only 1/3 of the full length of I-10 (2,460 miles between Los Angeles and Jacksonville), and I-10 is only the fourth-longest interstate highway (I-90, from Seattle to Boston, runs a bit over 3,000 miles).
The areas of some of the cities and metro areas he mentioned are a bit misleading - the city limits of Juneau extend about 100 miles along the coast and 30 miles inland, but the vast majority of the population is in a few square miles between Auke Bay and Mendenhall Lake plus maybe a square mile or so around downtown, and what little else there is is almost all on the middle half of the coast. Similarly, the San Bernadino metro is huge in area because metro areas are generally denoted by counties, and San Bernadino and Riverside Counties both include a huge area of desert. The vast majority of the population is in the southwest corner of San Bernadino and northwest corner of Riverside, with about a half million in the Coachella Valley (central Riverside County) and not much in the east.
I always hated cruise control myself until I drove from Boston to Ocala, FL.
1,250 miles in 25 hours...it sure came in handy then haha
Don’t quote me on this, but I think the reason states started out so small on the east coast was because the large Appalachian Mountains prevented many people from reaching the other parts of the unexplored land so they settled in those first territories
I'm from upstate New York, in the Appalachian mountains. They're barely mountains at all, due to how old they are. There's even a walking trail that runs through them from Georgia in the south to Maine in the north, so they're not that difficult to navigate through. Maybe you're thinking of the Rocky Mountains?
@@copo2835 you havent been to the lower parts of appalachia then. sure theyre not the rockies but with how things are in my area im completely certain that the many many hills and dense forests were definitely more than enough to slow early travel back when they had only horse and buggies and no roads. theyre also why theres not a lot of big cities in appalachia, cities tend to crop up in areas with flat land and you can drive for miles and miles out here and feel like youre on a rollercoaster with all the ups and downs and curves there are.
Love to see them react to the Louisiana purchase and how absolutely INSANE of a deal that was by the US to get that from France
BRITAIN: HAS INVADED EVERYONE AT SOME POINT IN HISTORY
BRITAIN NOW: size of a US state
The blonde dude says they found the small states first then moved westword. No they conquered stole and Slaughter the natives. Then they brought Africans over to do all the work. When the Europeans got here they didn't even know how to farm the natives taught them that and then they slaughtered them purposely gave them smallpox systematically slaughtered the American buffalo to starve out the Indians. Oh yeah and the name Indians was given to them the audacity of these people
When you are on a US highway and can look ahead of you and see the road going straight to the horizon you think I have a long way to go. And you check your fuel gauge. LOL
Yep! Especially when you can look in the rearview and see the same thing!
My brother asked me for help moving and I decided to drive out and make a road trip of it. Miami to Yuma Arizona, primarily, utilizes two interstate highways (I-75 and I-10). Those two roads will take you most of the 2500 mile trip. Two roads, 2500 miles.
A three hour road trip is pretty easy and standard for our family. We’ll drive over to family on the coast and it’s just under three hours. 7 hours is when I start to lose it. We used to have to drive from Central California to Las Vegas pretty regularly, and it could get pretty brutal. 7 hours in a car is my max these days. More than that and I’m finding a motel for the night.
I can remember *many* a time, just in the last 2 years, that if I only had to go 100 miles, I'd of been thrilled. I've never driven the entire length of the US, but Massachusetts to Colorado was enough 1,930 miles. Connecticut to south Florida was no quick little romp either. 1400 miles. That trip really sucks because you're driving the eastern seaboard. Not to mention, you get to Florida thinking "I'm in Florida!!!" 6 hours later.....
Live in the MidWest. Many years ago, my dad's office had a Brit over on a special project for 2 weeks. He was telling my dad he planned to rent a car for the weekend and go see Disney. When my dad and another coworker explained it was over 20 hours to drive one way, he was rather heartbroken.
About a year ago I took a road trip with a friend from Durango Colorado, to Sedona AZ, then Big Bend in TX, and finally drove for 18 hours from southwest Texas to Nashville stopping for only gas. The whole trip was a hair over 2,600 miles, about the same as driving from Paris to Moscow. And that was only a small part of the US.
The size of America is one of the reasons politics is so different over here. For example. Guns. When citizens are spread out and so many live in gigantic rural areas where it takes police 30 plus minutes to respond, having a self defense weapon can be the difference between life and death. America’s size and federalist state structure also explains why we use the electoral college. There are many things like this that I’ve noticed folks over in the UK have a hard time understanding.
I remember living in Atlanta area and my commute to work was about 65 miles one way. It took 1 1/2 hours to get to work each day. I hated it. I did move to the Jacksonville area and although there is not much traffic, everything is so spread out that it take about 30 to 45 minutes to get some places.
Atlanta traffic is so bad. There are no days off for that crap lol. I’ve lived here my entire life.
Block size is usually pretty uniform within a given city, but can vary widely from one city to another.
A common size is gauged at 10 blocks/mile. However, some (e.g. Salt Lake City, Utah) have 8 blocks/mile…and some (like Seattle, Washington I think?) have 20 blocks/mile 💐
I'm Philly most blocks are 100 houses per block. 50 on each side of the street. It makes the addresses come out even.
One of the best trips I've taken is a family road trip from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to Los Angeles, California. The trip took 3 1/2 days covering 2,650+ miles and the best part was to see just how the country changes from the east, to the mid-west, to the west. It was well worth it.
Questions because that sounds really cool to do:
1. Did you ride through the states nonstop?
2. Rough cost estimate?
3. Is there a difference between the terrain of the midwest and west? I 've always thought they were similar?
@@kev792
The trip lasted a total of 10 days from June 22nd to July 1st in 2018.
1. It took 3 and a half days to drive from Pennsylvania to Southern California and just as long to drive back. The first night, we stopped in Le Claire, Iowa, the second night was in Brighton, Colorado, and the third night was in Las Vegas, Nevada. I drove the same route back, but stopped at Grand Junction, Colorado for the first night, Lincoln, Nebraska the second night, and South Bend, Indiana the third night.
2. The total trip? I budgeted $3,000 for the entire trip with $1,100 in hotels (three and a half days in California), $600 in fuel, and $600 in food. I always like to have more than I anticipate and prepared for the trip for a few years.
3. We stayed on I-80 until we reached the end of Nebraska were it split and took I-76. The eastern part of the mid-west, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, seemed to be very similar to Pennsylvania. Some rolling hills, a few small mountains, greenery, and more trees. Once we hit western Iowa and into Nebraska, it started to flatten out and had green prairies. Colorado has nearly every type of terrain from rolling prairies in the east, the Rockies in the middle, and the start of the desert in the southwest. We took I-70 in Denver to I-15 in Utah and that's were the terrain changed a lot. Southwestern Colorado was much more humid and had more and more desert, except for some sparse green areas. For the most part, it stayed this was until we got closer the the western part of southern California.
One thing that was surprising to my kids was in the early morning at the hotel in Brighton, Colorado, it was about 60 degrees. We stopped at the Vail Pass rest area just off of I-70 (about 30 minutes from the hotel, in the mountains) at it dipped to 39 degrees and by the time we arrived in Las Vegas that evening, it was 109 degrees.
It might not be too different, but for me and not being out there in 30 years, it was pretty different.
@@northofknowhere130 Sounds awesome! I might try to do a trip in the future when I get to save some extra cash. And Colorado sounds really interesting! Thanks for sharing!
One of major reasons for size difference in East was the survey system and methods used early on that relied on geographical boundaries such as rivers, lakes etc. As the movement progressed the survey methods and equipment improved and a rectangular system of survey, or township and range, became more expedient.
East of Mississippi, county size for several states was set by transportation available during those times. Horse and wagon. The county seat where the county courthouse was located, had to be on average no more than a day's wagon ride. People could conduct their business in the county records office like birth and death records, record deeds etc.
I live in California. I one made a 650 mile round trip from Merced to San Diego and back in one day. These two cities are both in California. Took about 12 -13 hours. The strangest thing is, I remember taking the journey, but I don’t remember why I did it, or why I needed to turn around and go back on the same day.
Being a New Englander, I find it interesting that we are bigger than England. Connecticut originally spread to the Pacific Ocean, but no one knew how far away it was. Cleveland, Ohio was first settled by Connecticut migrants who were exploring the Northwest Territories (Ohio at the time).
I was born in CA (San Bernardino county). I lived in East Anglia (RAF Mildenhall). I used to drive to London and thought nothing of it. Driving to Arizona took longer.
Last time I was in Vegas, the people I was with wanted to walk the full strip to the Stratosphere. Bad idea. Was almost there, but they chickened out & my feet ached so much, I demanded we take a taxi back. Lesson learned.
We just went to Vegas again, last September, for my niece's 21st birthday. We did that walk twice, and that includes my eighty year old Mama.😂
I live in Las Vegas and I tell visitors hotels are farther than they appear. The shear size of them gives the illusion of closeness. The good news is there are bars every 20 feet to freshen up! (Ok, I made that one up, but not by much)
As someone who lived in San Bernardino county for years and years, I can assure you that it's pretty much a frying pan with some dirt in it and freeway congestion.
When the Santa Anna's come down the Cajon pass...feels like your roof is gonna blow off...and sometimes trucks are tipped over.
Wyoming is wild because it is 3 percent larger than the UK and yet the UK has 67.33 *million people*!
*Meanwhile* Wyoming has, as of the most recent census, only 578,803. That's 0.0085965097282044% the population size.
And most of that is spread about as only Cheyenne and Casper have a population north of 50k and that next 2, Gillete and Laramie, are roughly 31-33k respectively.
Theres liiterally a town called Lost Springs and its population peaked in 1910 with a population of 207 and is now *6*
“I thought New England came down further too.” say most Americans watching this.
I live in the Inland Empire, and he left out a fun fact about the area: for that massive size, there are only 4.5 million people here
Mark 3:34. I must be the exception! Not being into Math, for it depresses me for one thing, "100 Miles", would discourage me. Especially now that I'm not supposed to drive long distances because of my sleeping disorder.
Well, fairly recently, I needed to take a poor, blind baby mouse, that I rescued from my, Chihuahuas, to a wildlife sanctuary. When trying to make arrangements for getting it from here to there, the distance sounded like a difficult risk. But then he mentioned it in relation to time, and how it was only forty minutes away! My perspective changed!
I used to commute to work on a nightly basis, and going there at night, always seemed quick and easy, compared to driving home in sunlight, when it felt like it was taking an Eternity, what with Relativity and all of that.
Well, driving to the shelter, didn't take as long as driving back. The place even turned out to be the same place that I took a rescued baby beaver, back in the 1990s. Driving back, I kept making wrong turns, because it all looked familiar to me, because I had been there before, so I didn't feel lost. But making adjustments for course corrections, it was still a relatively short time. It was seeing the miles accumulate that made it seem like an ordeal. Especially if I might need to refuel sooner, because of the course corrections. But yeah, depending on a driver's personal perceptions and preference, saying how far in distance versus how much time, can make a big difference! 😁
I Commute from Arizona to California on a biweekly basis And it's over 229 miles to hear you guys talking about 26 miles is wild lol. Love you guys though
Mark 5:55. I once saw a school video of math problems, that had a funny one about a man's commute to work being longer than to home, because of so many, one way streets. 😳
It is closer from the California - Arizona border to El Paso (530 miles) than from El Paso to San Antonio (565 miles) which is the next closest major city.
We consider 200 miles to be "local" lol! Live in Roswell, New Mexico USA! Drove 100 miles to college and the 100 miles back home 5 days a week for 4 years!
Better slow down at Elida
I worked with my Uncle doing land survey in Minnesota, there most towns have a block size of 100 yards by 100 yards . The plat of the streets is 10 yards width giving a standard of sixteen blocks to hte linear mile and 256 blocks in a square mile. SO the standard block including streets is about 1 hectare or exactly 2.5 acres.
Fun fact about Alaska: there are approximately only 21 people to every single bear.
block size is a difference per town and village for example the grandmas town one block was 1/16 of a mile while the town i went to college in was 10 per mile
Impressed this isnt copyright claimed
This is how I felt as an American when I moved to China, and worked in a city of 30 million people that few Non-Chinese have even heard of. (That city is Chongqing, that number is the metro area, not the downtown core).
really cool to see my home county and metro area represented San Bernardino county is indeed huge and riverside county is nothing to sneeze at either. great part of the state of California.
It's videos like Lawrence's (Lost in the Pond) and this that I wish Europeans and Americans would watch before they comment, "what would you know, you've probably never left your state, let alone visited another country!"
Walking in Las Vegas: Oh god I made the same mistake. Thank you staff at the off Strip casino bar for not letting us walk anymore when we came in for water! Everything is Las Vegas is huge so it doesn't look that far. Just ride the Deuce and stay on the Strip unless you specifically want to go to Fremont Street/outlet shopping/to a gun range/whatever. Your hotel will have shuttles for most of that. Really, please don't walk. It is hot enough there to put you in the hospital or worse if you're foolish about it at the wrong time of year. On the day it happened to me it was 45C (114F).
My daily drive my senior year of highschool was around 70 miles, about 30 of which was fairly crap dirt and gravel, curvy country roads through a canyon. Days or week + long family road trips are part of life here from about as early as you can remember.
My family moved to Virginia from California a couple years ago. It's closer to where I came from, so we can visit my mom and siblings in Ohio far more easily. We just have to cross Virginia, West Virginia, and part of Ohio to get there. But the trip takes us 10 hours. Better than the 5 days it used to take, I guess.
One of my favorite songs from Great Britain back in the days was Big Country by a band with the same name...we thought it weird they sung a song called big country coming from such a small country..In a Big country dreams stay with you, like a lovers voice on a mountain side...
Where I live, in Michigan, a 90 minute drive one way is just the cost of doing business.
Same here my fellow Michigander
The sheer size of the U.S. and our economic and military power makes it much less likely for a U.S. citizen to travel internationally, speak a foreign language, or have the same degree of concern for world events and international opinion about the U.S. that most people in the world would have.
If you live in Europe, you can easily get to several other countries quickly and relatively cheaply. It might be worth your while to learn a language to get a better job or go to university in a country only a few hours away by car from where your family currently lives. This is much less likely in the U.S. Unlike in the U.S., relations with these nearby countries could have a vast effect on your own country's economy. In much of the world (though probably not so much in Europe), military situations involving nearby countries is a huge concern. These things are just not really as much of an issue for U.S. citizens.
I've even encountered fellow American citizens bemoaning how the average American is so ignorant of world events/geography compared to Europeans, but they don't stop to ask themselves why or even whether or not we should care as much as the rest of the world does about such things.
You were talking about the small size of the eastern states versus the rest. In the colonial days, virtually all transport between the settlements was done by sea. Going inland required rivers. The size of the West required the railroads. To put it in context, consider historical travel times. A person wishing to travel today from St. Louis to San Francisco could do so by air in 4-5 hours. In the late 1800s, it required perhaps 4-7 days by river steamboat and rail. In 1850, during the California Gold Rush, that trip lasted 5-6 months on foot across the continent accompanied by a wagon full of food, or about the same duration on a sailing ship around the tip of South America.
Well and the appalachians also kept people east as well to a degree...
You guys even had me laughing with the little jabs intended at Wales. And I don't even get the jokes.
Fun fact about counties Texas has over 250 counties and Delaware has 3 if I remember correctly
And Louisiana has parishes instead of counties.
I am a parts runner for a total of 4 coal mines and my average daily milage is around 400 miles a day...and that is Southern Indiana and Illinois mostly...from where I live it takes a half an hour to get to my first pick up and then depending on where I have to go it can be a two and an half hour drive to deliver parts and then back an hour to pick up more and another hour to deliver those and then another hour to pick up the next ones...I guess you get my point...just in two states it takes me around 12 hours a day to get everything delivered.
I drive an 800 mile trip 4 times a year, and it would be a nightmare without cruise control.
For 15 years, I drove 25 miles each way to work. Never thought anything of it except when the roads were nearly impassible in the winter and it might take 2 hours to get to work.
I live in southern New England (Rhode Island) we don't do blocks. Cities were settled and roads made before grid systems and suburbs have winding streets to have a more pleasing effect.
I remember in college it was 45 minutes to school, then an hour and some to work, and after, 30 minutes back home. If it's less than an hour trip I dont sweat it. Most things (church, friends, good restaurants) are around 45 minutes away. I remember when my friend was going to college in Indiana I would drive out there if he had a show or something. It's about 32 hours round trip from Upstate New York to where he was, more time driving than we actually got to spend together lol.
All I know is that I have to cross just ONE state (Georgia) to reach Florida and yet to drive from the coast of South Carolina just to Miami, Florida is a solid 12-hours! And another 3 hours to reach Key West.
Traveling from south-central Mississippi to Midland, Texas by car is a 14 hour drive. Dallas is the halfway point of the trip.
If you want to see a perfect metropolitan grid, check out Phoenix, AZ metro area. As its population explosion was in early 90s, it was planned in 1mile by 1mile superblocks.
My daily commute in the States is around 70 miles round trip. About 65 miles of it is Interstate which makes cruise control a must.
I'm gonna say it -- England and the rest of the English-speaking world is riding the coattails of the U.S. when it comes to prestige.
Blocks tend to be roughly similar sizes in a given area, but can be vastly different in different areas, for instance in the more urban areas you usually get a large number of blocks in a mile, but in the more rural areas it's not rare to have blocks be miles long
I used to commute 100 miles each morning to work, and of course the same to get home. I traveled from my home in central Mississippi, to my job in ... central Mississippi. Luckily, I drove a Cadillac Fleetwood. It was a basically a one and one half hour ride on a magic carpet - with a radio. After a few months, I started a new job that was only seventy miles away. It still took the same time, since it was on backroads. If you ever come across a '93 Fleetwood - buy it!
I'm so glad you noticed the slides thing, too! I was watching that on my own like "wtf order is this"
Lol, when they found out he was from Grimsby, they’ve been pouring it on!
Britain is a tiny village. England is a tiny nation. You just don't see how small it is because you've lived there so small.
I live at the top of Indiana, and a couple of summers ago I drove 9 hours at about 70mph one way to pick up a cat for transport to my city. I drove straight there got a hotel, slept, woke up got the cat and immediately left to drive back 9 hours home lol.
When we go on vacation to Florida, It takes us about 28 hours to get there driving non-stop. It take about 5 hours to get halfway through Florida once we cross the state line..........
Three is the number thou shalt count,
And the number of the counting shall be three.
One fun fact about the United States is, we have a population of 300 million people and 400 million guns.....
As someone was born in and lived in San Bernardino county for 25 years, it's truly hard to explain just how dense yet widespread of an area it is. You can drive for well over two hours and see nothing but city and suburbia, and you'd have no clue you were travelling between different cities unless you were looking at freeway signs. it's like a Judge Dredd megacity but mostly horizontal.
Yes, it would be a part of the Los Angeles Megalopolis. including L.A. County, Riverside, Orange and Ventura counties as well. truly massive. and the county itself...is unbelievably large.
As someone from Maine... Dear god I'd go mad if I went there. That's just nuts. Cities just ain't it, mate.
Urban sprawl isn't a good thing
you explains something i wounded for years...the small states thing...thank you that makes perfect sense
When I lived in Seattle a 22 mile trip to work was about a 2 or 3 hour drive and possibly longer on the way home.
Genuinely, we tend to think of something being within 100 miles to be “close” or “nearby” 😅
My current commute is also 26 miles one-way and it's the shortest work commute I've ever had in the 25ish years I've been driving to work.
100 miles being a long way? I travel 120 miles just to get to and from my job every day
I live in New England. Massachusetts to be exact. I've travelled and lived all over the US. I drove from Chicago to Orlando non stop in 27 hours, lol. I arrived on Friday at 7pm ready to go out and party.
When i lived in rural Louisiana the grocery store was 30 miles away, i drove 80 miles round trip everyday to work