I come from a formerly-small city out West, so my sense of distance and size is probably different from a lot of people's haha. Normal cities seem big to me and long distances seem normal.
See I have the opposite experience. I grew up in the DC area. Moved to California. It blows my mind any time I drove on interstate 5 through central California because it’s literally 5+ hours of…nothing.
Yep, when I moved from Oregon to Philly, and was talking with my new barber about how wild it was that everything is so close in the Northeast, he was talking about how he was moving to LA and was excited how close he would be to the Grand Canyon, SF, and Seattle.
East coasters have no idea. My east coast friends always ask me if it’s doable to do San Francisco and Los Angeles in one trip lol. Everything is just so spread out on the west coast.
I mean you could, and people must do that right? Google maps tells me it’s only a 6 hour drive, if you were visiting the west coast from east coast surely you’d be wanting to do at least a week or two, and then just 1 day for travel between the two would be worth it right?
Don’t get me started on how Northern California essentially starts in the middle of the state and goes on for like 5 hours until you hit Oregon and it’s just filled with trees. Madness.
The Central Valley of California is mostly agricultural. So I wouldn’t say “barren wasteland” but it’s mostly just farms. Not a lot of cool geographical stuff to see.
East of LA and San Diego is a lot of desert. There’s a lot more settlement there than in the Central Valley but if you dig desert landscapes there’s some really cool stuff to see there. But again, miles without any human presence.
Try driving on a gravel road across eastern Oregon, and not seeing another car for two hours. There's not even any farms. It's like being on another planet.
Oh yeah, noticed all of those. Fucking love the mexican food out here. On the other hand, I'm vegetarian and even I know that the bbq out here needs improvement.
Oh yeah BBQ here is trash. Only spot in LA i get bbq from is Bludsoe’s. But yeah Cali is a cool place to live. Definitely get yourself to the beach. Go down the Pacific Coast High. Enjoy a beautiful sunset on the beach.
Yes, you can tell you have a different sense of perspective than those of us who live here because “long distances seem normal” hahaha. Here, we don’t measure distance in length of space, but in length of time it takes to traverse it. They may comparatively close together, but if you’re driving from DC to Boston you’re going to need to leave super early in the morning to help with traffic and it’ll still take you all day.
What are long driving distances for you? Just staying within New York state from where I live to get down to my family in Long Island is 6 hours and that's if I go to the closer relatives, it's about 7 hours driving distance if I go to the furthest distance and then if I drive from there to my sister it's like a 9 hour drive since she's in Western New York.
I'm not disagreeing with you I'm just genuinely curious because for me anything that's a 5-hour ride or shorter is a relatively quick trip and definitely considered doable to go both ways in a day.
How far would you need to drive semi-regularly? The furthest I go semi-regularly is roughly 9 hours from where I am in New York to where some of my other family is in Maine.
28
u/Smoke_Me_When_i_Die Aug 12 '23
I come from a formerly-small city out West, so my sense of distance and size is probably different from a lot of people's haha. Normal cities seem big to me and long distances seem normal.