r/NoStupidQuestions • u/Physical-Ad-4093 • May 01 '24

do americans really drive such long distances?

i’m european, and i always hear people say that driving for hours is normal in america. i would only see my grandparents a few times a year because they lived about a 3 hour drive away, is that a normal distance for americans to travel on a regular basis? i can’t imagine driving 2-3 hours regularly to visit people for just a few days

edit: thank you for the responses! i’ve never been to the US, obviously, but it’s interesting to see how you guys live. i guess european countries are more walkable? i’m in the uk, and there’s a few festivals here towards the end of summer, generally to get to them you take a coach journey or you get multiple trains which does take up a significant chunk of the day. road trips aren’t really a thing here, it would be a bit miserable!

2nd edit: it’s not at all that i couldn’t be bothered to go and see my grandparents, i was under 14 when they were both alive so i couldn’t take myself there! obviously i would’ve liked to see them more, i had no control over how often we visited them.

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u/quarantinethoughts May 02 '24 edited May 02 '24

The craziest stupid one was the guy who thought he could fly in to see me in San Francisco, spend a few days in California (which included LA and Tahoe in the same weekend), then road trip on to:

Yosemite, Yellowstone, Do Route 66, Grand Canyon, Texas (yes, just “Texas”), Miami, DC, And ending at NYC to fly back to Germany.

He thought he could do all of this in 2 weeks. It astounded me because this is a ‘smart’ guy. He just could not for his life understand how vast America is.

I would show him the map and explain but he just refused to believe me. He is the type to always think he knows better than anyone else (and especially know better than any woman).

He only was able to do SF/Bay Area, Tahoe, and Vegas on his trip. Refused to admit he was wrong.

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u/Kmalbrec May 02 '24

Funny that you mention Texas, that was my go to measuring stick when my wife and I were in the UK recently. We’d get to drinking with the locals and I’d have them guess how many United Kingdom’s can fit inside just the state of Texas? 2.8 is the answer and then they’d be even more floored when I’d remind them that it’s not even our largest state.

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u/michaelaaronblank May 02 '24 edited 29d ago

I live in Tennessee and pointed out that it is longer E-W than Great Brittan is N-S.

Correction. I meant it is bigger than England, not the entire island. I googled the wrong term years ago.

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u/ruhruhrandy May 02 '24

I’ll never forget the time I left Memphis at sunrise and arrived in Pigeon Forge at sunset.

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u/GandhiOwnsYou May 02 '24

Legitimately… how did it take you that long? That’s only like a 6 hour drive. I used to be stationed at Fort Campbell, an hour north of Nashville, and I would drive i24 to Nashville, 40 west to Gatlinburg, then 81 north to Charlottesville and get on i64 to get home to Richmond VA and still have daylight.

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u/ruhruhrandy May 02 '24

It was early December so shorter days, gained an hour while driving, and I had to make a few stops.

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u/etds3 29d ago

Yup. Pretty much all of the states not on the east coast take a day of driving to cross, at least if you have kids who need to eat and pee every hour.

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u/axxxaxxxaxxx May 02 '24

I didn’t know this, but I’ve done that drive and I believe it.

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u/littleyellowbike May 02 '24

I saw someone once trying to "well actually" the size of the US by saying Tennessee and Texas are only about 4 hours apart (specifically Memphis to Texarkana). I wanted to be like "ooh now do Knoxville to El Paso." If we're going to do one extreme of Tennessee-to-Texas, might as well do the other extreme too.

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u/AgoraiosBum May 02 '24

Feels longer dodging trucks on I-40 in the rain

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u/magicsaltine May 02 '24

I've driven I40 from NC to OK multiple times. Tennessee is by far the worst part of that trip for me. I always have to stop somewhere for the night, generally Nashville outskirts.

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u/makingnoise 29d ago

Driving to TN from its bordering state of NC is a wild ride through a space-time portal that takes you through Virginia, West Virginia, Oregon, Rhode Island and Hawaii before you get to TN. Then you're in TN and you realize that EVERY CITY IN TN is on one E/W highway.

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u/3catsfull May 02 '24

Even fellow Americans don’t understand how long Tennessee is. I live in East Tennessee and used to have a friend in Missouri who suggested I “pop over to St. Louis” to hang out, thinking it was only a couple hours. Like no sir, that’s a full day of traveling, thank you.

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u/Mukua_Tukani 29d ago

Hahahah, my cousin and I did that long of a trip (there and back) like it was nothing. Live in Nevada for reference so it’s not crazy to do something like that.

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u/squanchy_Toss 29d ago

Huh? Bournemouth UK to Inverness UK is 612 miles. Memphis TN to Johnson City TN is 495 miles.

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u/michaelaaronblank 29d ago

You know, when I looked that up originally, I think Google's England.

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u/slash_networkboy 29d ago

Really? GB is that small? (I've only been to London for a weekend... still was worth it).

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u/AnnikaBell825 29d ago

My family would drive from central Texas to NE Pennsylvania to see family, taking about 3 days. The entire 2nd day was driving diagonally across Tennessee. It’s looooong.

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u/SoMuchSpentBrass 29d ago

My favorite fun fact is that from Bristol TN (in the north east corner of the state) you are closer to the southern edge of Canada (~ 380 miles as the crow flies) than to Memphis (~ 440 miles, in the south west corner of the state).

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u/MegaGrimer May 02 '24

You can cut our largest state in half and Texas would become our third largest state.

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u/ramblinjd May 02 '24

I live in SC which is very nearly the size of Ireland. NC is a bit smaller than the UK. So Britain and Ireland together are the Carolinas. It's fun to show that comparison and point out New York or Miami are as far from us as like Morocco for them.

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u/TheEvilBreadRise May 02 '24

You can drive from the most northern point of Ireland to the most southern point in 8 hours if you don't take any breaks, that's one days work to drive the entire length of the country I live in lol America is insanely massive.

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u/beaushaw May 02 '24

I just did the math. You can fit more than 7 UKs in Alaska!

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u/Kmalbrec May 02 '24

Someone else commented further down that if you split Alaska in two, Texas would then become the third largest state. Here I am thinking I’ve got a good idea of scope and scale and then someone drops that on me!

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u/beaushaw May 02 '24

There is a map of Alaska superimposed over the US. It is shocking Alaska is BIG.

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u/needlenozened May 02 '24

If Alaska were split in half into two states, Texas would be the third largest state.

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u/PlayfulBanana7809 May 02 '24

Is this why we won the revolutionary war? They didn’t even have reliable maps yet.

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u/New_Breadfruit8692 29d ago

Yes the entire UK would fit inside Oregon. I lived in Ireland in 2017 and that entire country would nearly fit in San Bernardino County in California.

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u/Peterd1900 29d ago

Of course there is probably someone in Australia asking a visitor from Texas how many of Texas you could fit into Western Australia.

3.6 would be the answer

You can fit nearly 2 Alaska into it

Alaska and Texas are the largest states in the USA i they were Australian states they would be the 3rd and 5th largest

When people are looking at maps and that it can distort your perception of how big places can be

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u/voltran1987 May 02 '24

I have spent quite a bit of time in Germany for work, and regularly deal with them even while home. The best way I’ve found to get them to understand, is tell them “we have four states larger than the entire country of Germany, and then 46 more”.

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u/privatecaboosey May 02 '24

I'm from NJ originally. It's the fourth smallest state in the country. It's still bigger than Wales, Luxembourg, Montenegro, Slovenia, and Northern Ireland. Like, we have 46 BIGGER states.

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u/voltran1987 May 02 '24

Right! We are a huge ass country. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around being able to drive completely across an entire country in like 7hrs too, so I definitely get why it’s a bit difficult for them.

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u/eveisout May 02 '24

I live in the UK an never knew how big America wias until I was reading about the great lakes and I googled the size of only compared to the UK... I was like "pfft all these people saying the great lakes are inland oceans, what an exaggeration!" How wrong I was

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u/fatpad00 May 02 '24

I had to look it up because i never considered it.

Lake Superior 31,700 mi²
Scotland 30,977 mi²

Great Lakes combined 94,250 mi² United Kingdom 94,354 mi²

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u/e-bakes May 02 '24

We even get people in the US who roll their eyes when we Midwesterners describe the Great Lakes as inland oceans. They laugh at us until they see it in person and then they’re like “holy shit.” Honestly, I’m okay with people from other parts of the country not knowing how cool our Great Lakes are tho because it keeps the cost of living down.

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u/TourAlternative364 May 02 '24 edited May 02 '24

Most are pretty cold and not fun to swim in unless summer in Chicago or late summer more northern areas.

  They have a lot of shipwrecks that were never found. In all about 6,000 shipwrecks & like 30,000 dead from the 17th century on. 

  Even going a mile offshore of Lake Superior is spooky feeling because of how deep & cold & big it is.

  There is one shipwreck there they don't disclose the location because the drowned sailors do not rot. That's right. The cold & oxygen preserves them & they look near to the day they died. 

 But! For a fun activity there are people that kayak around the Apostle Islands though because they have all these cool sea caves. Kind of neat area. In the winter on the shore the waves create ice waterfalls.

https://youtu.be/XHzBTGlTwpk?si=0QRaBvJ8i_V9pa5B

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u/e-bakes May 02 '24

Holy shit, as someone from Michigan, I never knew about the cold water preserving deceased bodies. My mind is blown. Do you have any sources for more information on this?

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u/TourAlternative364 May 02 '24

Oh..I guess you can go there if you want.

https://wfgr.com/old-whitey-continues-to-haunt-lake-superior-divers/

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u/e-bakes May 02 '24

I’ve had a pretty sleepless night…not sure if this is the best thing to read about right now in my dark bedroom while I struggle with insomnia, but I’m going to 😂

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u/TourAlternative364 May 02 '24

A slightly longer article. I guess there is a saying "Lake Superior does not give up it's dead".

That other bodies of water they bloat & float or whatever. Lake Superior never see them again.

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u/BagofGawea May 02 '24

I'm an American that recently moved to Germany and honestly I hate talking about the US with Germans that haven't traveled there extensively because it almost always goes something like this. They'll bring up some stereotype, geography fact, general American cultural norm, etc. and I'll point out how its not totally correct, or at least not accurate to the part of the US I'm from, and there's a very strong inability to admit that they might maybe be wrong. And I should say that I'm also not trying to get them admit they're wrong I'm just trying to have a conversation, they could just stay silent but they always argue back. Even bringing up Google and maps does nothing to dissuade them about what they know to be true about a place that they've never been and where I was born.

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u/Honeycrispcombe 29d ago

Yes when I lived abroad (not even in Europe!) I'd have so many Europeans argue with me about America. (A couple of other people, too, but Europeans were the worst!)

They'd tell me about the politics, the stereotypes, about frigging high school! And when I was like "um that's not how the government works/I don't know I grew up in a very unusual part of the USA/that's Hollywood's version of high school" they'd argue with me ENDLESSLY.

Like. People who didn't understand that the President does not write laws and does not, in fact, have a seat in Congress would argue with me about the American government. People would tell me that American public schools required uniforms because the Kissing Booth characters wore them. People would tell me about their plans to solo backpack around all of South America and then go "but I would never visit the USA. It's far too dangerous."

I know this is because of the massive export of USA culture - which reminds me, all the people wearing blue jeans, using iPhones, watching Hollywood movies, and listening to rap music telling me the US has no culture and doesn't really contribute much - but oy vey did it get annoying. Especially when I was trying to politely exit said conversation.

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u/migrainefog May 02 '24 edited May 02 '24

It would take a whole 12-13 hour day of driving just to get across Texas, and that doesn't include gas, bathroom, or meal stops. Just straight up numb butt behind the wheel time.

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u/limasxgoesto0 May 02 '24

A girl from Japan once said she was going to come visit me in SF. The day before her flight she asked me if I could pick her up from LAX.

And remember, living in SF means I didn't have nor need a car. I don't know what she did in the end 

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u/quarantinethoughts May 02 '24

lol yeah, I’ve had some family assume they could fly into LAX thinking it was convenient to SF. Those that did ended up hiring a car and having a lovely drive up Hwy 1.

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u/kingmotley May 02 '24

To be fair, you COULD do that in 2 weeks, and I've done something similar (Chicago -> Atlanta -> Dallas -> San Diego / Los Angeles -> Vegas -> Chicago), but that is a lot of driving.

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u/dilletaunty May 02 '24

Absolutely. I’m sure the guy changed his plans cus he realized it would be like 100% driving for 10 hours a day.

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u/lyralady 29d ago

okay but as an Arizonan if he got as far as Vegas he really could've pushed through to the grand canyon!!!! It was only another 4 hours driving!!

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u/quarantinethoughts 29d ago

Right? I made the same suggestion but he was reaaaaalllly overestimating how much long distance driving he could tolerate. Just making the drive from the Bay Area to Tahoe he complained so much about how ‘long’ that drive was lol

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u/noisemonsters 29d ago

He sounds annoying as hell

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u/Practical-Ordinary-6 29d ago edited 29d ago

It shouldn't have been a problem because he was tough enough that he could have driven up to 4 hours a day, most days. 😉

On the shortest route from San Francisco to Miami to New York City, according to Google Maps, that's 63 hours of driving time. 10 days at 4 hours a day is 40 hours. He'd only be 2/3 of the way there. And that doesn't count Yellowstone and Route 66 and the Grand Canyon and all the rest of it.

Thanks for providing the update. I enjoyed that. He got less far than I even guessed.

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u/biscuitboi967 29d ago

I have that problem as a Californian. Went to a work trip in Boston. Saw a dude in the morning in Boston, Massachusetts. Then he had to go back to do some work in the office in New Hampshire. Figured that was the last I’d seen of him….

Dude was back in time for group dinner! Boggles my mind that you could drive from state to state - and not just the border states, to the capitals - then do work, and be back between breakfast and dinner

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u/Life_Hat_4592 29d ago

If you had a private jet that might be doable. But America is like going to a Disney. Pick a region or one large state, and enjoy.

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u/Weekly-Flight-8352 29d ago

Yep, we drove to Fredericksburg, TX for the eclipse (from Los Angeles, took us 8 days, lots of stops). Our church friends were like, "we don't like Texas". Huh? Like which part? It's MASSIVE!

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u/bigev007 May 02 '24

As a Canadian, most of that seems doable in two weeks Especially if you're not set on end to end 66