LarryJ

That was Tina Fey on SNL.

Cloudship

It's a mile and a half away. There are runways longer than that.

84fiero

I actually never knew the elevation got up that high in Kansas.

Adding to the state highest points is my own state of Ohio - Campbell Hill. Equally unexciting and at 1,550 feet, quite a bit lower than Mount Sunflower



It's located in the town of Bellefontaine which also has a bit of historical trivia for having the first concrete street in the US in 1891.

Interestingly, there is actually a "US Highpointers Club" for folks who "collect" visits to the highest geographical point in all of the states.

http://highpointers.org/us-highpoint-guide/

Proudelitist

Europeans are often shocked at just how big North America really is (Canada and Mexico included), particularly Brits and Irish because you can drive across their entire countries in a few hours.

I have known more than a few who have said their destination was LA or Las Vegas, but the flight was cheaper to New York so they would rent a car and drive it..thinking it would be a few hours or maybe a day. Uhhh...dedicate a week if that's the plan. I knew an Irishman who thought he would spend a few days in Toronto then drive to Calgary to finish out the week...good lord. He got to Thunder Bay before realizing what that drive would entail and took a flight back to Toronto. Not only is is stupidly far, much of it is extremely remote and isolated.

I hear the same thing about people visiting Australia.

Proudelitist

My shocks are more oriented toward climate.

My first visit to Houston in August was a real eye opener on exactly how humid it can get on earth. And I have been to Malaysia and Vietnam. This was way worse.

And the instability in Colorado. One day it was dry and 60F..that evening it was 27F and snowing. The following day started cold, still, and gray and by the afternoon the winds were so bad all flights were delayed out of COS.

pinniped

The interesting thing to me is that although the UK is small by US standards, the Brits don't seem to be big roadtrippers.

When I lived in Wales, a buddy of mine in St. Andrews phoned me saying he'd managed to get a tee time on the Old Course for the next day. 2 slots available if I wanted them. So a friend and I were like YES (duh!), we packed a couple bags and hit the road. My Welsh/English friends thought we were crazy to embark on such a long roadie with no notice. Some of them had actually never been to Scotland, or had done so only once or twice in their life.

To me, it was basically KC to Chicago...actually a little less...and really a pleasant drive overall. This was coming from small-town mid-Wales, so although the UK has lots of trains and domestic flights, the car really was the optimal way to get there.

Fraser

We really aren't because we're hemmed in a lot by the water

Soon after moving to the US I had a drive from Richmond, VA to Charlotte, NC which is about 260 miles. To me that was a long drive!

When growing up we had done longer drives as a family, UK to northern Spain/southern France but that seemed like a very big deal and was often broken up by an overnight stop.

Indeed, and sometimes it isn't until you start flying within the US that you realise how big it is.

My father was travelling between London and LA every couple of weeks for several years, and was doing other trips from London to other US cities so you'd think was very familiar with the geography. However, one of his trips had him visit Chicago and then fly to Seattle. He had no idea it was about 4hrs, thinking it was about half that! I can only put it down to the fact LHR-JFK is say 7hrs, LHR-IAD is about 8hrs and LHR-LAX is about 10.5-11hrs...

Similarly, I had visited Southern California a lot as a kid but I had no idea Hawaii was 5hr flight from LA until I was in my early 20s! I thought it was maybe an hour off the coast

darthbimmer

It's not just Brits and Irish. I've spoken to so many travelers from Europe and India who figure they'll visit Las Vegas, Disneyland, and the Grand Canyon in 3 days. Driving.

Perhaps not surprisingly, then, it's been my experience that travelers of the one nationality who do not have trouble grasping the wide distances between places in the western US are Australians. A few hundred miles to the next major city? Sounds about right!

pinniped

Aussies are also the only people I've met outside of North America who dig the American-style musclecar.

84fiero

I live in Dayton, OH and have taken many road trips to the western US, including a move to CA and back - so I get long distances. Yet I'm embarrassed to admit I somehow I grossly underestimated the driving distance to Nova Scotia when I started thinking about a road trip there. Glancing at the map it felt like maybe a 12 hour trip.

But actually mapping the route, it's over 1,500 road miles, so about double the drive time I had guesstimated. Maybe the small sizes of each state in New England just made it seem shorter to my eye, not really sure. Still, I'd driven to upstate New York before so it should have dawned on me that I was underestimating. Not sure what I was thinking!

pinniped

One of our dream roadies is to tour the entire Trans-Canadian Highway. Maybe as a companion to the Great American (Northwest) Roadmap, although I could easily see getting carried away and mapping out an 8-week itinerary!

It's just a lot of frickin mileage...

stut

Most of our motorways are packed and our petrol prices through the roof. It's not quite the same experience! I drove from East Anglia up to Cumbria last month (with a very small person, or I would've chosen another way of getting there) and dearly wished I could have got the train!

That said, we do like a good ferry/tunnel ride and drive. I've just come back from Southern Portugal, where there were plenty UK-registered cars.

And our friends over the North Sea in the Netherlands, as mad keen as they may be on cycling to get around locally, they love driving to get away from home. Is it because KLM are their national airline? Maybe. But it does seem to be the law that there has to be at least one Dutch-registered car in every city in Europe.

Proudelitist

I was on a business trip to London around 2011. We needed to visit a remote office in the Birmingham area, and my British colleagues were making a huge deal about it being "quite a long drive". It was around 2.5 hours.

pinniped

Yea, fortunately I've only had to drive in London or the Southeast a small number of times. I remember picking up a rental car once and jumping on the M25 with no real clue what traffic I'd encounter.

Wales up to Scotland was fortunately a piece of cake. We must have slipped in between the worst of Liverpool and Manchester traffic...and I seem to recall we were north of there by the time rush hour would have hit anyway.

stut

The M25, I can handle. It's an urban ring-road (beltway), you expect it to be busy.

It's the M1, the M4, the M6. These long, inter-city motorways. While there are stretches that are a pleasure (the M6 over Shap Summit, for example), it's like driving the entire length of the country on the 405.

I tend to avoid, and go for quirkier roads like the A1. This is a road that can take you from 8-lane highway with an average speed of 85mph down to something lined with terraced houses, a tyre fitters and fresh egg shop, a self-storage container site, a school for children with dyslexia, an oriental supermarket and a transport café in a Portakabin all within the space of a couple of miles.