People tweeting stuff. We allow tweets from anyone.
RULES:
When I was in college at Eastern New Mexico, which is about 45 minutes west of Amarillo Texas, a couple friends, both from New England, had the bright idea of driving down to the gulf over a 4 day weekend.
I cautioned them against the idea, trying to explain Texas was bigger than they could imagine. Three hours into the trip we got a motel room in some hole in the wall town and went back to school the next morning.
What? It takes 24 hours to drive from the Canadian border to Mexico border. Texas is about 770 miles at its widest, that’s a breezy 10-12 hour drive doing the speed limit or just over.
Yeah so nearly half their weekend driving....through Texas. One of the most boring places to drive through.
You're assuming no traffic in major cities. I've gone from close to the Louisiana border to new Mexico and it took about 16 hours.
Do most cities not have bypasses? In Canada even most small towns have a bypass so you avoid the traffic lights.
It’s mostly for the semi traffic, the stopping and stopping ruins the roads, so they have a highway going around town to avoid that.
I went on a cross Canada car drive in the early 2000s. We left from Sudbury Ontario to make it to the west coast in BC. We took our time, sight seeing and making many stops along the way. Ten days later we made it to Vancouver.
The best part was that on our sixth day, we ran into a friend in Medicine Hat, Alberta. He had left Kapuskasing, Ontario the day before and was expecting to make it to Vancouver in about 60 hours with non stop driving. His eyes were so blood shot and he was literally shaking from all the caffeine drinks, pills and coffee he had been taking. He had some strangers with him that he had picked up as hitch hikers and he said they were keeping him awake.
We worried about him the whole time but he called us two days later to say he made it. We caught up with him three days later.
I would skip Florida. You won't miss much.
What are you talking about?
Mugging followed by incarceration and deportation is a great travel story!
The only subtropical part of the US?
It's uniqueness alone makes Florida special.
I mean, sure if you're into repressive heat and humidity 10 months out of the year, clouds of potentially deadly but always annoying mosquitoes, ticks that inflict strange lifelong disabilities, sand everywhere imaginable and dreary mold literally growing on everything - it's fucking great!
You do know Hawaii is part of the united states, correct?
I challenge you to drive or catch a train to Hawaii.
It has an interstate!
I like everything about this except the "being in the USA" part.
Europeans do be like that.
Just to compare
Sure, "TIL Europe is only seven countries." Try the same but go Amsterdam -> Riga -> Athens -> Lisbon -> Amsterdam it's 8000 km in a straight line. Europe might be smaller than North America, but it's not that small.
In the US, the equivalent would be: Seattle -> Boston -> Miami -> San Diego -> Seattle. That's 8500 miles (~13,000 km), and doesn't even go to Alaska or Hawaii. I don't think you can drive around Alaska, but if you could, it would be a similar distance.
Europe isn't small, but it is a lot smaller than the US.
The US is a little below 10.000.000 km³, Europe is a little over 10.000.000 km³. I didn't go to Russia, the UK, Iceland, Finland, Norway and Sweden.
Huh, I always forget that a large chunk of Russia is part of Europe. I've never understood the demarcation between Europe and Asia, I think it should be considered one continent.
If we only count the EU (which I think most refer to when they say they're visiting "Europe"), it's a bit less than half the area at 4,225,104 km2. Maybe round up to 5,000,000 km and include Norway, the UK, and Switzerland, and maybe some of the Baltic states (would probably push to 5.5M km).
Meh, same with US folks visiting Europe, which is actually a common movie trope. I'm sure there's also plenty of people on both continents wo will think something through.
Yeah, we frequently get them in Norway. People who want a weekend trip to Oslo and drive to "the fjords" and back one day, or see stuff after 1500 in winter.
According to a map, Aurlandsfjord is about 4.5 hours drive from Oslo. You could probably see two of them in a day, with a fair amount of driving in between. You'd start around 6 AM and be back around 11PM, but it sounds feasible.
That's not that uncommon where I'm from. I've known people to drive up to Yellowstone from my area (Salt Lake City) for a day trip, which is about 5.5 hours each way. It's a long drive, but you could probably get to two different places within Yellowstone and be back by bedtime. Or if you stay over one night just outside the park, you can spend most of the day at the park before coming home.
Growing up, we'd drive from Seattle to Vancouver, CA a couple times a year for a day trip, and that's about 3 hours each way, depending on the border crossing. My parents would routinely drive from Seattle to Portland for tennis tournaments (not pro, just for fun), which is also about 3 hours each way. I sometimes drive from SLC to Cedar City to watch a play, which is about 3 hours each way. My coworkers drive from SLC to Wendover (1.5 hours) or Las Vegas (5.5 hours) to go gambling, though they usually stay 1-2 nights for Las Vegas.
Driving a few hours to see something is pretty common for Americans.
This gotta be from mapporncirclejerk, right? Right?