How America Makes Britain Look Like a Tiny Village 

Supposedly when Alaska was admitted as a state, Texans began complaining about being the second largest state. Alaskans said, "Shut up about being second largest or we will divide into two states and make you third largest."

There are still stretches of rural highway in America where it's inadvisable to leave one town for the next without a full tank of gas.

Not my story, but the best I have ever heard for this: A guy who lives in British Columbia got a call from relatives in England: their daughter was flying to Montreal and they were hoping he could pick her up at the airport. He tried explaining why he couldn't but they weren't getting it until he said "YOU live closer to Montreal than I do!"

I used to work for a Japanese firm that had a US office. One of the company officers came to visit us. He and I were to fly from San Francisco to Dallas Texas. The entire flight was taken up with him glued to the window, amazed at all of the unused land. He could not comprehend such large areas where no one lived.

I know people in Britain are often surprised at how few Americans ever leave the country, but from London to Paris is only about 300 miles. From where I live, it's well over 1000 miles to the nearest border with another country. In fact, I've traveled over 1000 miles in 4 directions and never crossed a border. You just get so far and think...oh the heck with it.

Years ago, we had some colleagues from Germany come to our Maryland lab location. One day at lunch, they wanted to visit another group of colleagues in Florida. We tried to tell them it was impossible to drive to Florida during a lunch break, but they ignored us and tried. They realized their mistake hours later when they were still in Virginia. Of course, they hit the DC rush hour on the way back, and some how it was all our fault.

I have an Xbox friend from the UK & he couldn't believe most Americans rarely or never leave the country. I tried to explain to him that I don't even live in one of the larger states, but I could drive 500 miles west & still be in my state. I just told him to think of the United States as Europe & each state as it's own country. We're simply too big of a country to just take a weekend trip abroad unless you live on the Canadian or Mexican border.

Another issue is that a lot of Americans have a poor sense of scale when it comes to other parts of the US. I'm from a larger state and went to Boston a few years ago on a work-related trip. A friend of mine in Rhode Island said, "You should have let me know! We could have met over lunch." I hadn't said anything because to me, Rhode Island was a completely different state and I thought it would be too far away for a visit. In actuality, she lives in RI and commutes to Boston every day for work.

I grew up in Ohio, but in college, I did a semester in Paris and lived with a French host family. My host brother was absolutely astounded when I told him I’d never been to California. He just couldn’t believe that as an american I’d never been there. I had to calmly explain that to fly to California from Ohio is as far as it took me to cross the Atlantic to come to Paris. Lol.

Once, as a super poor college student, I was asked to be in a wedding for a friend who had already graduated college. The wedding was in Kansas City, and I was living in Cincinnati, Ohio. I could only afford to pay the tux rental and one night in a hotel, so I drove the 9ish hours, ~600 miles early Friday, attended the rehearsal Friday evening, stayed in my hotel room that evening, was in the wedding on Saturday, and drove the same distance back home after the wedding. I didn't even think it was weird, just something that had to be done.

Weird wild fact: I used to live in Fairbanks, Alaska and my parents lived in southern Oklahoma. I made the trip by car several times. Mathematically I could do it in four days, but was never able to do it in less than five. Anyway, the midway point, in terms of distance, was north of Edmonton, Alberta. Like, I'd just driven across the U.S. (north-south), and to a point in Canada where I was north of >95% of its population, and... I'm still only half-way there. Incidentally, that's almost exactly the same driving distance as Grimsby, England to Cairo, Egypt.

When I visited Holland, some people were shocked I had never visited Hollywood or Hawaii. They assumed since these places are frequently in movies, that everyone in the US visits them often. I live in the Midwest and explained that for most people living in the US, Hawaii is a once in a lifetime place to visit because it is a pretty long plane ride and pretty expensive to visit. They were blown away by this.

Years ago I had a friend visiting me in Los Angeles from Connecticut. I decided to take him on a weekend trip to Big Bear and the Mojave Desert. As we were driving on the 10 (I-10 for you East Coasters) freeway for about an hour, he asks me, "so what state are we in now"? I told him we were still in Los Angeles, lol.

I remember my friend from England wanted to drive from Kansas City to El Paso and go down to Mexico to visit. I could tell that he thought it was just going to be a few hour drive. We were almost to the Kansas Oklahoma border and he asked me how much further as if it wasn't that far. I show them on the map where we were and he freaked out. That's the moment Craig started to realize how far it was.

Many Americans don't even understand the scale of our nation. I was on vacation in Idaho and totalled my car. When I was talking to my insurance company, the poor girl suggested I rent a car and drive home and when mine was fixed, simply drive back and pick it up on the weekend. I then had to explain that I live in Ohio and that is 2000 miles and three days drive each way. At that point, I didn't feel the need to explain I was in a tiny town where I couldn't even rent a car to attempt that anyway.

As a Texan, when I visit New England I'm amazed how quickly you can go from state to state.

A few years ago friends from Europe visited. They said they were going to take a drive around the lake. We thought Lake Champlain. A couple days later we get a call only to find out they were on the trans- Canada highway, halfway to California, lost as anyone can be because they underestimated the size of the United States/North America. They thought they could take a day drive around the Great Lakes and be home for supper - starting in Vermont. They were surprised communities could be so far apart. They simply didn't do their homework before coming to the US. Not having a realistic idea of the size of the US, they wasted a good part of their vacation touring our highways because of that.

Fun stories! That misperception of scale goes both ways. My first trip to Paris, France (a really really low-budget excursion), my first evening there I mapped out the places I wanted to see - it would be all on foot (low-budget). I live in a mid-sized US city with a big river flowing past it, and I think that might have skewed my perception somewhat. Anyway I planned a walk to five of my preferred locations in Paris, one for each day, keyed to what I thought my not-fit, not-young body could reasonably do. The first day I set out for my first destination, mentally prepared for a vigorous and lengthy hike. 20 minutes later, I had reached the location. I have to wonder what people around me on the street thought: probably that I'd had a stroke, because I couldn't believe how *close* that destination was to my lodgings! Happy to say, that meant I got to see a lot more of Paris in that week than I'd expected!

I once drove a British visitor about a hundred miles on a route that took us in view of one of the Great Lakes. He was incredulous when I said it has waves like the ocean. When he finally saw the lake, big enough that you couldn't see the other side, he said "Wow, it does look like the f'ing ocean."

I worked with a guy who had been stationed in Germany and had some German friends that said they were visiting the states and would like to drop by and see him one afternoon. He lives in southern Indiana and he asked them what state they would be in and they said New Jersey. He just laughed.

I used to work for a New York company where my commute was an hour and 15 minutes each way to/from home. I changed job roles and offices, and my commute became an hour and 20-25 minutes each way. So, I was basically driving 3 hours a day just to work. I emigrated to Australia, which has the land mass of the US, but the transport attitudes of Europe, and was repeatedly accused of exaggerating or lying when I said I had left a 3 hour round-trip commute, because "no one" would travel more than 15 minutes to get to work. Australians also didn't know whether to believe me when I said that my plane had taken off with a meter (~3 feet) of snow on the ground. They thought that was some sort of life-threatening blizzard condition that would have shut down the airports.

3:32 Fun fact: Wyoming and Colorado are the same "size," geometrically speaking (4 degrees tall by 7 degrees wide), but because Wyoming is entirely north of Colorado, the curvature of the earth and resultant narrowing of the meridians toward the poles make Wyoming more than 6000 square miles smaller.

I love how other countries (mainly the UK) say “across the pond”. Idk why it’s just so funny calling the Atlantic a pond, and it just feels like they’re talking about us like a neighbor.

I’ve also noticed that we don’t measure places we are going by distance but by time. For instance when I go visit my sister in central Pennsylvania from where I live in Washington DC area it takes 4 hours and I have no clue how many miles. Also I know it takes 17 hours to get to Orlando, it takes 12 hours to get to Atlanta, 3 hours to get to NYC (no traffic and early morning on the weekend) 8 hours to get to Myrtle Beach. I have no idea the mileage to all those places.

This video does make a great point. I worked for a Swedish company here in CA. I remember the dawning look of realization on my Swedish boss's face as I explained: I could start driving, at motorway speed, eastward from Silicon Valley and -- three days later -- would still be in the U.S.

Honestly as an American I like how compact Europe is to us. When I was in Europe I was amazed how you could travel between multiple countries in one day. That simply isn’t possible in North America unless you buy multiple plane tickets.

This is also why it's uncommon to be multi lingual in the US. The straight line distance from the southern tip of Florida to the northern tip of Alaska is over 4,300 miles- similar to the distance between London and Nairobi Kenya or Mumbai India. English is used (almost) everywhere that entire distance. Sure there is the French part of Canada, and Spanish is getting popular in the souther US, but English is perfectly sufficient that whole way. There's not a whole lot of incentive to go through the arduous task of learning another language merely to forget it due to lack of use.

I used to work in the tourist industry here in Hawaii. I remember one young couple that came out here on a round the world trip from Southern France. They had already stopped in Dubai, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc. They were pretty freaking loaded (like multimillionaire kids who inherited some nice fat old money checks). They thought they could visit Hollywood and Las Vegas on the day after they came to visit Hawaii after stopping in Tahiti the day prior. I looked at them and asked, how long was the flight from Tahiti? They said, about 6 hours. I said, now the flight from here to LA is about that long, it'll take you a few hours to go see all the sights you want to in Hollywood, and then it is about that long by BUS (because they thought there would be some sort of train or something) to Vegas. They immediately regretted their decision to book a tour in LA and a tour in Vegas on the same day less than two hours apart. They asked me to read their tickets for the tours. No refunds for cancellations less than 48 hours before start date. Their flight left for LA that evening from Honolulu and their tours were the following morning.

I talk to a guy in the British military sometimes, and somehow his parents got brought up in a conversation as he mentioned not seeing them for a few years. When I asked why, he said they were too far away. "Fair enough" I said, "how far?" A whole... 45 miles! I drive at a MINIMUM 300 miles every day! I often go upwards of 500-600. If you want to see how many miles is a long distance, become a truck driver. Actually, you should look into truck driving! It would give you a chance to see all of the country.

Back in high school we sometimes heard stories about exchange students. The program would have them visit for about a week. They would ask the host families things like, "Can we go to Disney World?" They had no idea that Disney World is over 1,000 miles away from here, as they were used to thinking of "European distances."

About 15 years ago, I worked for a British owned firm that had a divisional office in Italy; the latter had operational control over a division here in the states. My sales territory included Texas, and was of particular interest to our Italian-based director. When I first had the opportunity to meet him, he expressed interest in traveling with me on a road trip in Texas; he took the liberty to generate a list of prospects that we could visit, and seemed confident we could do this in a couple of days. While I don't have 100% recall, the prospects include 3 Houston based companies, 2 in the DFW metroplex, 1 in Midland/Odessa, 1 in Austin (my area of residence), and 3 in Lubbock. If you're familiar with Texas, you already know what I'm going to write, but if you're not, after I looked over the list, I offered that I'd love to travel with him, BUT if we're going to see try and see all of these prospects (assuming they wish to see us) we would need at least two work weeks to do so when factoring in our travel time within some of these cities as well as between them. (At first he didn't understand, but when I offered that Texas is basically the size of western Europe, we found a mutual understanding.)

Speaking as an English person, it seems to me that Laurence is very, very English, in attitudes and humour. But he seems to have learned to love his new home, and to have totally adapted to it. And he gives us Britons a real insight into the differences and similarities between us and our cousins over there. Very interesting. I'd love to follow him over there one day, and see the place and its infinite varieties for myself. Meanwhile - thanks, Laurence!

Went to a Green Bay Packers and Houston Texans game in 2013 with some friends. My brother who lives in Houston picked us up at the airport and started driving us to our hotel. One of my friends kept asking him, as we were driving, if we were still in Houston every 5 or 10 minutes or so. And for roughly 2 hours my brother would reply" Yes". We never left the city of Houston for two hours of driving at freeway speeds. Houston is HUGE

While standing by to fly home to California from Heathrow my wife & I chatted up this sweet English couple off to holiday in Miami. They mentioned they had friends in Denver and asked us how long it would take to drive there (from Miami) in a rented car. We told them three days and were surprised to see the look of disbelief on their faces. We added, thinking we were being helpful, that it would take one day just to get out of Florida and their countenances fell into total despondency. Having done enough to further Anglo-American relations we took our leave and returned to California. We hope they enjoyed Miami. We're sure their Denver friends understood completely.

when my wife and I were on vacation in London, we were taking one of the Jack the Ripper tours. Our guide was asking some of the participants where they were from and proudly said San Antonio. The guide stated something like "that's a pretty small town." He was quite surprised when I told him "San Antonio has nearly 2.5 million people." New York City hand London have roughly the same population but it really doesn't seem like it. Mainly because NYC is confined to an island(s), whereas London is more spread out.

I've always said that to truly appreciate the size of the USA, one should drive coast to coast. Even most Americans find it amazing just how large our country is.

I ordered something large from England last year, I live in Utah and they asked what the closest port was so I could pick it up. (Inland shipping was too much trouble to go directly to me last year.) I told them SF or LA. Out of curiosity, I guess, they asked how many hours away, when I told them 10, they were shocked and asked if I was sure I didn't want it sent to Florida, thinking Florida might be a closer drive.

I was struck by how big the US is when I traveled to Italy and realized that each state is the size of a country. I also was silenced when lfound out that, if California was an independent country, they would have the world's fifth largest economy

As an American, I like this channel a lot. It's very interesting to see an outside perspective on so many things I never would have considered out of the ordinary.

I was born in Australia and moved to America when I was 7, and I experienced reverse shock when I visited South Korea. It was absolutely insane to me that we could traverse the *ENTIRE* country of South Korea in 4-5 hours when that was the same amount of time it took us to drive out of our own state in the US. That was when I realized just how massive the US is. Some cities here are larger than entire countries too.

Laurence, I'm not sure how the UK feels about you, but to many of us Americans, you are a national treasure! Thank you for always giving us an education, food for thought, and so many, many laughs!!!

Many years ago, my Filipina wife got a call from some family friends of hers asking if we could pick them up from the airport, San Francisco International Airport. Only one problem: We then lived in Los Angeles, some 400 miles to the south. We explained; they were staggered by the fact that we would need at least six hours of hard driving to pick them up. After all, in looking at the map of the Philippines -- with all its islands -- it seems almost the same size as a similar map of the United States. That is, until you put them side by side, and to scale.

Someone recently pointed out to me that we Americans describe distance in time it takes to get there and I didn't notice until he pointed it out. But it's also funny because 10 miles by highway and 10 miles through the city have vastly different times and the city distance can seem further away.

Someone in Switzerland was curious about a potential long-distance move I was researching, from DC to Denver. She had no sense of scale for how far that meant and asked what the equivalent of that would be in her area. Using Google Maps and some trash math, I pinpointed her rough location and drew a circle with the radius of "DC to Denver." The circle enclosed most of Europe and a bunch of water. It blew her mind. XD

It really hit me how big this country is on my Route 66 trip. North Carolina to Chicago, then to LA via the Route. North to San Francisco and then east taking the "Loneliest Road in America", then through Salt Lake City, Denver, Saint Louis, and back to North Carolina. About 8500 miles in three weeks. What a trip... what a COUNTRY!

Years ago, I got a rather interesting awakening at the difference in distances between the US and various other countries. I was active in a hobby, and our national show/exhibition was in my state. A friend of mine from the Netherlands asked if they could stay at my house for the show. My response was "Well, you can, but I won't be here. The show is 6 hours away from my house." It was on the other side of the state from my house. We ended up meeting at the hotel.

When I lived in Australia I would hear Aussies talk of going to America. They would say it was "scary." One man drove all along the West coast and couldn't believe that all that had been built in the same time Australia was built by Europeans. "It's one city from LA, and goes on and on for hours. Then you go trough some towns and into what seems another city that goes on and on for hours, then some small towns and another city and another, for thousands of miles. How did they build all that. We can't compete!"

I was telling a coworker how I was going to visit a relative who'd moved to the middle of nowhere Idaho and it would be a 12 hour drive. They asked why not fly? Because it'd take 2 hours to drive to the airport, sit around there for another hour or more, take a couple hour flight to Idaho, rent a car, then drive three more hours. Realistically it doesn't take much more time to drive. I'd rather live somewhere with trains, but oh well.

I had an Australian relative visit us in California. We were fairly young teenagers (I was 16 and JUST got my license, and he was a couple years younger) at the time and he said he wanted to go to Disneyland "tomorrow." We live about 6 hours north of Anaheim. It wasn't like a little day trip. It would have to be a well planned weekend at best. We were too young to even rent a hotel room at the time, and there was no way to convince our strict parents to take a spontaneous trip. He got so upset that he came all the way from Australia and didn't even get to see Disneyland. 😅

NY to LA is roughly equivalent to a trip from Moscow to Lisbon in terms of covered distance

I used to frequent international airports and it never ceased to amaze me all the Europeans and brits that would come to USA and say things like... Oh.. we are just here for the week... we are going to start in New York, then head down to Miami, then go to Vegas, then we will go to San Francisco, then spend our last day in LA. and then i would just ruin their plans.. not because im evil and i enjoy it, but because i didnt want these people to book hotels and waste money when they might at best see 2 cities in a week. I remember when i first ran into families that would say these things and i just assumed they were super rich (since i knew some people that would fly to different states everyday just for lunch). But after meeting so many internationals i realized how little other countries think the US is. Even if you tell them and show them maps.... they still dont get how big US is until they fly a few places to get an idea of its size.

One of my favorite tidbits with regard to roads: Drive round trip from London to Edinburgh and back on A1 - the longest road in the UK at about 410 miles each way - and you will have covered about the same distance as driving on I-10 from El Paso to Beaumont one way *just within Texas*. And that's only 1/3 of the full length of I-10, and I-10 is only the fourth-longest interstate highway.

A flight from NYC to LA takes about as long as a flight from NYC to London. So yeah, it’s big.

My theory about the size of US states increasing exponentially as the country acquired more land going westward is that it is consistent with the speed of transportation increasing over time. During the original colonies drawing up of borders, usually along waterways, the speed of travel equated to that of a horse (or maybe four horses). As America expanded west in the 19th century, it became possible to cover greater distances much faster through the advent of rail travel, therefore it made more sense to draw a boundary for a state that could be traversed in a single day by train, which would have taken many days on horseback. The end.

Sort of off-topic, but geography can also be a different experience. My family live in the Chicago suburbs. We have relatives in Norway, from that part of the family tree. Some of our Norwegian relatives are big into cross-country hiking: you get a compass and a topographical map, and have to get from point A to point B. Norway is very mountainous. Those fjords aren't just for show; the whole country is like that, even the "flattest" part. These relatives came over to the states for a hiking activity here in Chicago-land. They had their compass, they got their topographical map, and... were utterly confused. "The map shows a hill nearby, but I don't see any hills at all!" A Norwegian's definition of a "hill" and an Illinoisan's definition of a "hill" are two very different things! They also experienced our highway system: eight lanes of traffic in *each* direction!! There's not enough room in Norway to fit that! Of course, if they thought IL was flat, they would have lost their minds in Nebraska. On the other hand, if they had held their hiking activity in Colorado, they would have felt right at home! So much diversity, when your country is most of an entire continent.

Same, when I used to live in Japan, anything above 50km felt like a long journey. But after living in Canada, 50km feels like a cakewalk (or drive in this situation). The car I had in Japan took 12 years to have 100,000 km on it, I did that in 4 years in Canada.

We recently took trains from Boston to Oakland and back again a couple weeks later, in those tiny roomettes all the way. Three nights and four days each way. It was an awesome, relaxing, almost other-worldly way to experience the vastness of this country. Trains get you into mountain canyons that no-one else but kayakers can see. Don't die before doing this trip.

I measure places by how long it takes to drive to them more than the physical distance. A hundred miles isn’t much in a rural area. But if you’re traveling through LA County during traffic on any part of that 100 mile trip, yikes. That’s too “far” to me!

I had a exchange teacher in high school from England. He had planned to take trips on weekends to places like Chicago and the Black Hills in South Dakota. Then found out once he got here how far those places were from the Twin Cities in Minnesota. Had to scale back the trips to in state destinations.

I'm from Houston, Texas. The fourth largest city in the US. While taking French in high school, we were always told that France was about the same size as Texas. But it wasn't until recently that I looked up the size of England compared to Texas, and was surprised to learn that it can fit 2 and a half times in it! I wonder sometimes how such a small country could have controlled so much of the world for so long, but then remember that it has a couple of thousand years of recorded history that my state and country don't have.

My Family had participated in the Northern Ireland Friendship Project some years ago. We had 2 teenage girls stay with us for 6 weeks during the summer. During that time we traveled around our home in Illinois. Then it came time for our annual trip to my Aunt and Uncle's home on a lake in Northern Wisconsin. We think nothing of the 400 mile 7 hour journey up there. The girls had to admit that this was the longest automobile trip they had ever taken.

When I worked in Linkoping (Linköping) Sweden (I'm from Ohio in the US) I did a drive with Swedish colleagues to visit the west coast Swedish city of Gothenburg (Göteborg). It was a three hour drive, but they had to stop in the middle for a coffee rest. Really? The first three hours in a US trip is when you just are getting settled in. Hint: if you have to drive a long way in the US, I recommend audio books.

The Canadian Provinces are also absolutely monstrous in size. An example I always love to mention, the Drive from Toronto, Ontario to Jacksonville, Florida is about 1,140 Miles, the drive from Toronto, Ontario to Kenora, Ontario, 1,150 Miles.

I recently drove from Texas to Virginia, and it’s astounding how long you can drive while still being in the same state. I remember Tennessee seeming to go on forever.

Thank you for recognize the frozen chosen in Alaska. We get overlooked by many....especially companies offering free shipping to any US address (or mistakenly say continental US...we are not an island off the southern coast of California despite how it looked on your grade school map).

Years ago, when we were stationed in Dunoon, Scotland, we used to hear about people raving about the salmon they used to be able to get in Inverary, but were warned that it was a long way, and that we should plan it as a day trip. So we got the kids ready early in the morning one day to head out there. This was way before the internet, and the maps somehow didn't really give a true idea of scale. Anyway, we got there something like the better part of two hours before they even opened up in the morning, and had to kill time with a two and four-year old for some time. Luckily the scenery was beautiful, and walking around the area was a joy. I think we even found a little playground for the kids. I just looked up the distance because I honestly couldn't remember how far it ended up being, and even though I knew it had not turned out anything like the distance it had been described as, I was still surprised to find that the drive was just shy of 24 miles.

When I visited Ireland I left the west of Ireland to drive back to Dublin. The bed and breakfast owners stayed at in county Mayo, expressed concern for such a long drive. I didn't understand their angst but since I had driven it a few days prior, I assured them that I'd be alright. I thought about it and I was still perplexed because we were all speaking English but clearly weren't communicating. When I got home I looked up the square miles of Ireland and Wisconsin where I live, and Wisconsin is larger than the whole country of Ireland. Finally I understood their concern since there probably weren't too many people who drive that in a day without blinking.

American here. I was planning a trip to Europe for my honeymoon and trying to plan out travel times. I plugged Edinburgh to London into google maps and thought “Well damn, I’ve driven further than that to buy a dining table”.

Many years ago my friend had a visitor arrive from London. We picked him up at the Detroit Metro Airport and drove off to a party in Traverse City MI (driving into a mild, for Michigan, snow storm. When we arrived we discussed the fact that driving from southeast MI to northwest MI, all still within the lower peninsula, was further than going from London to Rome. That put things into perspective for me.

I'm a Californian and when I hear people who want to visit plan their trip to see everything in California in one week, I strongly urge them to switch their plans up. Unless of course, all they want to do is drive, because that's all they'll be doing! California itself is a big state and there is so much to see. Add up the rest of the US, I suggest that people pick one place and spend more time in that one place, rather than try and see everything.

One day while on a trip to the US, my mom asked how far away was the 40 minute drive to the pharmacy, I told her that it was like driving from our house to the big lake we have back home around two departments away, usually a 3 hour drive (curvy roads). If we add the round trip distance from our hotel to the pharmacy (within the same city), it would have come down as us driving from the capital to another country (6-7 hour drive) we never even left the city, and it was a small 2 hour thing we did.

My undergraduate university in upstate NY was about 2.5 hours away from my home. On a good morning, my mother could drive over to my university, eat lunch with me, help me to pack up my dorm, and then we'd drive back home for the Thanksgiving break. A total of 5 hours for her in a single day, yet still entirely manageable. My college was 120 miles away, which means that my mother covered 240 miles in that 5 hour back and forth trip. And that was nothing compared to my younger sister, whose college was 5.5 hours away from home; yet, her college was still in NY! And my father, who grew up in the Bronx, went to college at Buffalo, and drove 8 hours to his university! NY is massive state, and it's far from the largest state overall. That really helped me to understand the scale of America overall.

I will say, I got an up-close experience with the scale of the States a few years ago when I took an around the country train trip. I am from New England. And for the first time in my life, I saw land extending as far as the eye can see to the horizon, in all directions. Singular farm stretching to the horizon. Desert's stretching to the extent the eye can see. The bloody endless sky of Montana. And I should point out that I spent a week of this trip onboard the train itself.

I remember driving to El Paso, Texas and I could see it up ahead for over an hour. It was so flat and far away, it was an optical illusion that it was close.

My grandpa has always had an "I'm always right" streak, and my mom loves the story of the one time she got him to admit that he was wrong. She was living in L.A. at the time and he came to visit. Noting how dirty the city was at the time he said "If you just clean up your block, then the next block is going to want to clean up! And the next, and the next, and soon this whole city will look amazing!" So she decided to skip the freeway and take only surface streets to her place. By the time they finally got to her house, he had to admit that the city was too large for that to work.

This was a fun video. I live in the Metro Detroit area (Michigan), and it's fun how people forget sometimes that Michigan is comprised of two different land masses (the Upper and Lower Peninsulas). This makes for some interesting quirks about our state. The biggest quirk is the two most distant major cities in Michigan. Monroe, MI (SE Lower Pen, near Toledo and the Ohio border) and Ironwood, MI (NW Upper Pen, on the Wisconsin border). There are two main overland routes between these cities. The first is entirely through Michigan, going over the Mackinac Bridge through both peninsulas. This is a 627 mile route, taking 10 hours, not counting stops. The second route takes the long way around through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and up through Wisconsin. This 673 mile trip is 10 hours, 2 minutes total. There's another route going to the west side of Michigan's Lower Peninsula, hopping a ferry for 61 miles across Lake Michigan into Wisconsin, and completing the rest of the 590 mile journey. But this way is 10 hours, 21 minutes long. To put this into a little more perspective, when I was stationed in the Washington DC area during my military service, I would make the drive back home to visit family. This drive took me through Virginia, West Virginia, a sliver of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, to get back to Michigan. It was a 551 mile drive totaling 8 hours, 13 minutes (plus stops). That's right. The driving distance between Washington DC and Detroit is shorter than the driving distance between Michigan's two most distant cities within the state itself.

When i first visited the UK i spent 3 weeks’ holiday exploring london, wales, england and Scotland and wss comforted by the fact that i saw so much in that timeframe by car, train, on foot. This could not be done as easily in the US.

I've lived in the US for a while, but I'm Brazilian and currently living in Brazil. Obviously it's not as big as the Us but it's also a huge country. It does affect the way we look at maps from European cities. We tend to think distances are much bigger than they actually are. In fact, I was surprised to see that Adrian's Wall is just about 120 km long (if my source is correct). For us Brazilians (and I think Americans as well) it's not that far. I also remember when I spend vacations in Italy, in a valley at the Dolomitas. When my hostess found out I was walking from one town to another she was astounded. She said I shouldn't do that, tahte it was too far and she would be glad to drive me around. But hey, most towns were less than 5 km (3,10 miles) apart.

Having grown up in Colorado, and having traveled through the state as well as multiple states, I knew how big the country is, but I was fascinated by how big LA is when I moved to California. I used to read about different cities such as Redondo Beach, LA, and Pasadena, and think "oh, those are separate cities", and then I found out it's all one giant Megalopolis. I also remember driving over the Sepulveda Pass for the first time, and thinking I was leaving LA, and then I saw the San Fernando valley, which stretched to the horizon, and thought "damn, this is a big city".

Michigan being bigger than the UK was a real mind boggler to me. Over Christmas break we drove from northern Minnesota across the whole length of both the peninsulas to visit my family near Detroit, then back 2 days later. I guess if you’re English this kind of trip would be unthinkable

If you flatten out WV, it’s as big as TX. Lol. Once at work, dealing with some GPS data for trucks, I was asked why there were more driving miles between jobs in WV than TX as they were essentially the same. I took a piece of paper and said “this is TX”. I wadded it up, through it down and said “this is WV”

I was cruising along one day listening to a retro radio program, when a story was told about how Paul McCartney once paid a taxi to take his pet chickens from his place in London, 400 miles to Scotland. I laughed a bit at that tale, then got to thinking. Wait, those places are only 400 miles apart? From my little city in southeast Idaho to the northern-most town in Idaho is 600 miles!!

I grew up in the Inland Empire. (along with New Mexico and Texas for a while a kid) The first time I got on a plane was to travel to Seattle, Washington for the weekend.... I always felt the IE was a nightmare of exaggerated suburban sprawl, but I was still in shock on my nighttime flight back home. As you fly over the San Bernardino Mountains, the Ontario Airport in the valley is just close enough that they begin to lower altitude over the mountain range and you get some good turbulence. The entire flight was dark, with small pockets of light alobg the ground as we passed Reno, Nevada and (perhaps Fresno?)... but then the windows light up like daytime as you come south over the San Bernardino Mountains and light stretches out to the horizon in two directions from Los Angeles and Anaheim out to Palm Springs, Indio... and even more lights sprawling south to Riverside and Moreno Valley... The scale is off the charts.

I grew up in Texas where the cities of Austin and San Antonio felt like they were practically continuous since they were only a 1-hour drive apart (not including travel time within each city). Now I live in a country where you can pass through 4 towns in a 30-minute train ride with no visual hint that one town has ended or another has begun.

I drove OTR tractor-trailer for a time, and yeah that really brought home just how massively large the US is. When you first get into it, and start laying out your trip with your road atlas, there's a tendency to think that the milage numbers must be off, it doesn't look that far...but don't be fooled, not only is it that far, it'll take longer than you anticipate as well, and sometimes far longer.

Laurence, as much as I enjoy your videos, I think I enjoy the comments to your videos more. I have read all the comments about the size of the US vs the size of the UK. People from all over have gotten excited enough to share memories. I myself have littered it with my comments. We have gone from talking about geography to talking about languages, and sharing all kinds of things. We need this! More if this! Keep it up! We need more of this!

Hearing a British/European tourist say they want to see all those things in a weekend makes me wonder if they have world maps in the UK/Europe. Their disbelief when you explain they pretty much just said their weekend plans were to see the Taj Mahal, Hadrian’s Wall, Gibraltar, and the Parthenon.

I grew up in Minnesota. My mother was from England. I remember once that her brother was coming to Miami on a business trip. He thought maybe Mom could 'pop by' for a visit ... 1800 miles!

Speaking of travelling long distances in the USA, when I was in my late teens I hitchhiked 2,200 miles from Louisiana to Los Angeles to San Francisco. Then I hitchhiked back. Roughly 4,400 miles in a little over a week. Kids, don't try this today. Those were very different times and I had a Nordic giant as my travelling companion.

This is why it's such a laugh when the Brits ask why more of us don't use public transportation in the US.

I live in Anchorage. The greater Ancorage area is HUGE, but all honesty if we are just talking about the city its self you can walk across it in 2 hours. but remember that the population of greater anchorage is 30 times smaller than metro London

Lawrence Thank you! I thoroughly enjoy your programs. You are not just educating your Brit viewers. But teaching us Americans a thing or three about our own country as well.

As an American I'd like to point something out. Brits wonder so often why we are the least likely people on Earth to travel outside of our own country... Well, this is why. Why go exploring more of the earth when we have so much around us we can't even take it all in. That's especially true in more rural places like here in the mountains. Simply put, there's so much space here, and yet we have fully developed infrastructure and economy, that most of us have no desire to go anywhere.

Being an Army brat that has travel across country several times and also being from Wyoming, I have always known how big this country is. However when I was 10 we moved from Tennessee to Ft Richardson, Alaska. We drove, stopping along the way to visit sites and family. We drove the Alcan highway before it was paved, towing a small pop-up trailer. It was an amazing trip and why I love road trips to this day. As an adult, I have driven from Denver to Austin many times and also from Denver to Great Falls Montana. We have had many road trips all along the Rocky Mountain region. I drove once coming back from our last station, from the Philadelphia area to Denver. My sister and I shared the drive and it was strange to go through large towns when I had learned to drive in the country. That was while I was in college. Even though I have lived in places with a lot of trees, it has been so long that I now get claustrophobic if I can’t see all the way to the horizon and a full sky. I am very much of the West - I love the wide open spaces.

I once lived in Portland, Oregon. In the distance you can see a snow capped mountain year round. This mountain is called Mount Hood and in reality it is a dormant volcano. It is located approximately 100 miles from Portland.

I had a cousin who grew up in Germany visit us here in California. She was a little disheartened when she learned she wouldn’t be able to visit Los Angeles and San Francisco during the first day and also have time to sightsee in both. I let her know it was about a three hour drive to either one (we live in the Valley) but then it would be a six hour trip to the next city. We ended up going to San Francisco.

San Bernardino county is mostly desert. My son-in-law is a Marine stationed in Twentynine Palms. It used to be an Air Force Base but they deemed it uninhabitable, so they made it a Marine Base.

I took part in a school exchange to Minnesota when Reggie White joined the Packers. My host father, originally from Wisconsin: "Great! It's only a six hour drive to Green Bay!" On that same trip, we visited some state park which still has an original cabin of one of the pioneers, forgive me for instantly having forgotten the name. The guide tried to impress a bunch of German school kids by saying "and this cabin was built in ... 1905!" She didn't quite get the reaction she was hoping for.

You should have mentioned that Alaska is so big that it is, at the same time, America's most northerly state PLUS America's most westerly state PLUS America's most easterly state. (Yup, look where the island of Semisopochnoi is.)

I recently moved from a major college town in eastern Iowa to one that is an hour north of Denver. The whole driving trip took about 11 hours by car, and over 773 miles (or 1244km).To put that in perspective for our European friends, that's about the distance from Paris to Vienna, or from Thurso to Bodmin in the UK.