We were in Massachusetts a couple of weeks ago.....staying at a hotel in Lowell. While loading up the car on the last morning the couple parked in the next space noted our Nova Scotia plate: "are you ever far from home......that's up by Greenland isn't it?.....how many days will it take you to get there?"
"About 10 hours.......We'll be across the border at lunch time and home for supper"
They had Virginia plates......roughly the same distance.
I grew up here in Fairfax County and went to law school at Duke. One Thanksgiving my grandmother was visiting and when I was about to leave to head back to school, she asked what the rush was. I said it was about 20 miles farther to Durham than it was to her house in Brooklyn and that the drive would take longer and she said, "That's not true, North Carolina's only one state over."
i live in Jacksonville FL and when I was in college ( back in 1991) a friend of mine ( who is now an Electrical Engineer) was meeting friends from Atlanta in Savannah. He wasn't sure who to get there so he asked them how to get there and of course coming from Atlanta they said take I-75 to I-16 east... so he did that.. went from Jax out I-10 to I-75 N to Macon and took 16 east... a 2-2.5 hour trip became 7 hours... Dumbass...
Now he would prob just listen to GPS
Wow, could I tell some stories of geographically challenged people in a lot of different contexts. The kind of stories that amaze me most though are people who make a wrong turn or miss a turnoff and go miles and miles before they realize it. Here's a story that still amazes me how somebody could miss it:
I went to college in Searcy, AR and it was pretty common for people to make trips from there to Memphis, about 100 miles away. The common route was to take the US 67 freeway to Bald Knob and then US 64 from there to I-55 at Marion and then take I-55 South to I-40 and then take either I-40 or I-55 into Memphis depending on which part of the city you were going to. When returning from Memphis, once you get on I-55 North from I-40, US 64 is the first exit. I knew somebody who one time missed the exit for some reason and kept on going. They didn't realize they had missed the exit until they saw the state entrance sign for Missouri-over 60 miles past the exit. This person had driven this route at least several times before. How does somebody who has driven a route before miss an exit and go that far without realizing it?
I work at a hotel in Tucson. I got a call from a guest who had flown into Phoenix asking how to get to the hotel. I asked where she currently was and she said "I'm on the 10" and I said "where on the 10?" and she said "I'm coming up on Quartzsite"
She said she knew it was 2 hours from Phoenix on I-10 but didn't know which direction and drove 2 hours the wrong way.
She was pretty pissed off when I told her she had gone the wrong direction.
I was once on the coast here in Orange County, southern California. Santa Catalina Island is visible from there, as it is about 20 miles off the coast.
two tourists were looking at it, one says to the other:
"is that Japan?'
:pan:
I'll admit that I'm geographically challenged with western states regarding their size. Denver and Albuquerque are close together in my mind for instance since they're both on I-25 and only one state away.
When my cousin was a child she wanted to get in an airplane so she could see the lines between the states.
Quote from: Takumi on December 14, 2011, 08:58:21 PM
When my cousin was a child she wanted to get in an airplane so she could see the lines between the states.
Well..technically you could do that, you can see the rivers that form some boundaries and even on land you can occasionally see the property lines and note the boundary from that. True it's not a hand-drawn line, but...
Quote from: realjd on December 14, 2011, 08:52:43 PM
I'll admit that I'm geographically challenged with western states regarding their size. Denver and Albuquerque are close together in my mind for instance since they're both on I-25 and only one state away.
At least you realize you challennged. Many people driving to Florida for the first time are amazed by the scale of the state.. Especailly if you come from the Northeast... so many small states. You see people all happy they are in Florida and God help them if they are going to Key West. At least another 8-9 hours in the car
I took AMTRAK from Rochester to NYC in 1994, and when the line paralleled the Hudson River, a kid asked his mother "Mom, is that the Pacific Ocean?"
Quote from: jwolfer on December 15, 2011, 12:30:39 PM
At least you realize you challennged. Many people driving to Florida for the first time are amazed by the scale of the state.. Especailly if you come from the Northeast... so many small states. You see people all happy they are in Florida and God help them if they are going to Key West. At least another 8-9 hours in the car
I get stuck in that all the time! Mobile to Tampa is not "about four hours".
Quote from: agentsteel53 on December 15, 2011, 04:02:43 PM
Quote from: jwolfer on December 15, 2011, 12:30:39 PM
At least you realize you challennged. Many people driving to Florida for the first time are amazed by the scale of the state.. Especailly if you come from the Northeast... so many small states. You see people all happy they are in Florida and God help them if they are going to Key West. At least another 8-9 hours in the car
I get stuck in that all the time! Mobile to Tampa is not "about four hours".
515 miles via the Interstate. To make that in about four hours would be pretty damn impressive.
I had briefly eyeballed the map and figured it to be just under 300 miles. it doesn't visually, look farther than the Tampa-Miami drive, which I believe is about 275.
Quote from: agentsteel53 on December 15, 2011, 04:35:25 PM
I had briefly eyeballed the map and figured it to be just under 300 miles. it doesn't visually, look farther than the Tampa-Miami drive, which I believe is about 275.
It's a long way across that panhandle. The I-75 exit from I-10 in Florida is Exit 296 (on I-75, I-10 is Exit 435; the I-4 interchange is Exit 261, so you have the Tampa—Miami distance pretty close).
I think a lot of paper maps distort Florida because so many of them put the panhandle in an inset, sometimes with a different scale than the main map. Makes it look smaller than it really is.
Quote from: 1995hoo on December 15, 2011, 05:13:10 PM
I think a lot of paper maps distort Florida because so many of them put the panhandle in an inset, sometimes with a different scale than the main map. Makes it look smaller than it really is.
yes, the trusty Rand McNally definitely does this.
they also make New Mexico look tiny.
I remember once, I think I was about 6 or 7 years old, couldn't have been older than 8. My mom and I were riding with an older couple from our church in downtown Milwaukee after some event (I can't even remember what that event was). We were going around various blocks aimlessly, looking to get on I-43 or I94 to head back home. The older gentelman driving asked, not expecting me to answer, "How do we get back to the freeway?" I looked up and saw a "TO I-43" sign and I said, "Just follow those signs!" To this day, my still talks about it in amazement about how I knew to find the way back to the freeway. I never thought it took too much brains to drive in the direction the signs point you in.
QuoteQuoteI think a lot of paper maps distort Florida because so many of them put the panhandle in an inset, sometimes with a different scale than the main map. Makes it look smaller than it really is.
yes, the trusty Rand McNally definitely does this.
they also make New Mexico look tiny.
What's worse than the Florida panhandle is how western Ontario is rendered. And, yes, putting the 5th geographically largest state on one page will make it really tiny. Las Cruces is almost a suburb of Albuquerque.
How many people have stood in downtown Detroit, looked across the Detroit River, and not realized that was Canada on the other side?
I remember going to college with a girl who thought she lived along the Mississippi River, but she lived in Pennsylvania. I asked her to make sure she did infact live in PA, as I wasn't positive. Once she told me yes, I asked where and she told me Towanda. I had to burst her bubble and tell her that mighty river was the Susquehanna. She was quite disappointed and I was amazed that for all her youth she thought she lived along the Mississippi.
Quote from: huskeroadgeek on December 14, 2011, 04:21:06 PM
Wow, could I tell some stories of geographically challenged people in a lot of different contexts. The kind of stories that amaze me most though are people who make a wrong turn or miss a turnoff and go miles and miles before they realize it.
Boy, can I relate. I work in a business right off I-80 in Northern NJ. I get numerous people every week who are lost and wayy off course for their destination. (They're lucky to stumble upon me, they didn't know they asked a road geek.)
A very common one is people coming out of NYC on the George Washington Bridge and wanting the NJ Turnpike South. However, by the time they ask me they've already driven about 30 miles past the split on I-80. They didn't notice any of the I-80 trailblazers, apparently.
I'll ask them, "Let me guess, you came across the GWB, upper level, right?"
"Yup"
"Yeah, you missed the split because you were out in the left lanes when you needed to keep right and now you've driven a good 30 miles out of your way. Where do you want to go?"
Once they tell me I direct them from where they are
Quote from: broadhurst04 on December 15, 2011, 11:12:22 PM
How many people have stood in downtown Detroit, looked across the Detroit River, and not realized that was Canada on the other side?
And then realized you you had to drive South to get there!
Odd geographical shapes can easily distort perception of distance. Florida is notorious for this, of course, but it's not the only state that can have that sort of effect.
Also contributing is the phenomenon that places that are more rural tend to psychologically shrink in size because there's less there.
Cape May is another good example of further away than it looks. It's two hours away from northern NJ - the exit numbers on the GSP make this apparent but visually on the map it doesn't look like 150 miles. I keep wanting to think of the Driscoll Bridge as the midpoint of the parkway. It's not. It's nearly three quarters of the way up.
Also, Cape May looks to be about a half hour away from Camden... in reality it's twice that. What gets you here is that it's not just straight over from Wilmington, it's down there. And South Jersey, despite the mental tendency to want to orient things along an axis, is not aligned north-south, it leans. Significantly.
I fell into this trap myself this past weekend when I decided to make what I thought was a slight detour on my way to Pennsylvania which ended up adding two and a half hours to the trip.
Another example of geographically deceptive: I-81 in Virginia. When I was making my trip home from down south last month I had initially figured I would leave Chattanooga in the morning and arrive in DC before nightfall... after all, I-95 is about 170-something miles in Virginia, so I-81 should be maybe a little more, perhaps 200 or so, right? Nope, I-66 is exit 300. Again, it's the diagonalness that fools you. You think you just have to go north when in reality you've got a lot of east to go as well.
Corollary with this: in 2003 when we made a family trip to Cleveland, my father was saying "well, this is the furthest west we've ever been!" I then pointed out to him that it wasn't, that Tampa (where we'd also been) was actually a bit further west. He didn't believe me.
He also didn't believe me when we were discussing places to go see baseball games and I told him that Detroit was closer than Cincinnati (to Connecticut). After all, Cincy is in Ohio, but Detroit's in Michigan, that's an extra state away! Yeah, well... despite that, it's not as far west and it's closer to our latitude.
Quote from: broadhurst04 on December 15, 2011, 11:12:22 PM
How many people have stood in downtown Detroit, looked across the Detroit River, and not realized that was Canada on the other side?
There's a popular, if unverified, anecdote in northern Wisconsin that goes something like this:
A couple on vacation stops in Ashland, WI for a break and admires the view across Chequamegon Bay where one can see Washburn and the upland of the Bayfield Peninsula. After gazing for a while, they start to talk about what they're looking at. The husband says, "I believe that's Canada over there."
The wife isn't sure, so she casually turns to a local who happens to be at the same vantage and asks, "Excuse me, but is that Canada over there?"
The local Ashlander pauses for a moment knowing full well that Canada is over 100 miles further north. But seeing an opportunity to have some fun he replies, "Oh yah, it sure is, doncha know?"
The husband says, "See honey, I told you so."
The couple gets back into their car and starts the long journey back south thinking they've seen Canada.
Quote from: 1995hoo on December 15, 2011, 05:13:10 PM
I think a lot of paper maps distort Florida because so many of them put the panhandle in an inset, sometimes with a different scale than the main map. Makes it look smaller than it really is.
They do that a lot with Michigan too. People don't realize how far across the UP is when headed to places like Houghton, Ironwood, or Ontonagon from downstate. It's about 4-5 hours to the Mackinac Bridge from the big cities downstate, and another 4-6 hours to get across the UP.
Quote from: JREwing78 on December 19, 2011, 11:25:19 PM
Quote from: 1995hoo on December 15, 2011, 05:13:10 PM
I think a lot of paper maps distort Florida because so many of them put the panhandle in an inset, sometimes with a different scale than the main map. Makes it look smaller than it really is.
They do that a lot with Michigan too. People don't realize how far across the UP is when headed to places like Houghton, Ironwood, or Ontonagon from downstate. It's about 4-5 hours to the Mackinac Bridge from the big cities downstate, and another 4-6 hours to get across the UP.
Yeah, Duke87's point about Virginia is apt in this context as well. The far southwestern part of Virginia, like down where Bristol is, is a LONG WAY down there, and Cumberland Gap (which I've unfortunately never visited) is even further away. I'd wager many people living in Northern Virginia who did not grow up here taking Virginia history in the fourth grade do not realize that Virginia shares borders with Tennessee and Kentucky. Back in 1997 I worked in Alabama for the summer and I drove down via the I-81/I-75/I-59/I-65 route. It took me about 12 hours from Fairfax to Montgomery and almost half of that time was spent in Virginia because it was some 373 miles from my parents' house in Fairfax to the Tennessee state line near Bristol. (Given that it's then over 400 miles further to Montgomery, why was half the trip in Virginia? Because I was able to drive a whole lot faster in Tennessee and Alabama.)
Maps REALLY distort Alaska and most of the Canadian provinces. I think it's hard for many Americans to realize just how BIG those areas are, with the effect no doubt amplified because most maps quite rightly omit large portions of these areas because they consist of empty spaces.
Quote from: 1995hoo on December 20, 2011, 09:32:48 AMMaps REALLY distort Alaska and most of the Canadian provinces. I think it's hard for many Americans to realize just how BIG those areas are, with the effect no doubt amplified because most maps quite rightly omit large portions of these areas because they consist of empty spaces.
And at the same time, make little NE states look a lot bigger than they are, due to the bizarre 'map each state separately' policy of American road atlases.
Similar to Florida, most people don't realize that in England you can travel almost as far from London to the SW as to the north. Lands End, at 291 miles, is further away from London than Newcastle-upon-Tyne (which is 277 miles up the A1). The Scottish border can be reached in 311 miles from London - only 7% further away (and on better roads so a quicker journey time) than Lands End.
Growing up near London, places like Manchester (196 miles via the motorway) and Sheffield (167 miles) were conceptually a lot further away than Exeter (197 miles via the motorway, 171 via the direct route) because Manchester and Sheffield is in the North, whereas Exeter is in the South. In fact, being NW of London, not too far from the M1, Exeter was about the same (bit further for the direct route) and Manchester and Sheffield were closer.
Quote from: english si on December 20, 2011, 10:18:54 AM
the bizarre 'map each state separately' policy of American road atlases.
What exactly is so bizzare about it? It's quite utilitarian. If you know what state you're in, and you know they're in the atlas in alphabetical order, it's very easy to just flip through and find the right page. If the country were mapped out with each page representing a rectangular chunk in a grid, it would be more difficult to find the right page. And this wouldn't be efficient since due to vast differences in population density, showing the whole country on the same scale is unwieldy.
Northern Ontario is like this too. My MapArt Ontario folding road map maps the southern province at 1cm on the map to 2.5km in real life. Flipping the map over, every cm in Northern Ontario represents some 17.25km. It takes a long time to drive a few cm's up north.
but when you reach the edge of the page, rather than turning a small number of pages.
The changing scale on every page really doesn't help with getting a sense of scale. Sure have multiple scales to deal with sparse areas (Europe-wide ones do and even Britain ones do), but 3 or 4, not 50.
Looking at an overview map which tells you which page is where works fine on state atlases, city plans and every road atlas in Europe, why can't it for American ones?
Also heading east-west and your route being on consecutive pages, and even not too many pages to turn for a N-S route is far better than being on page 15, then 8, 9, 68, 99, 100, 44, 56, 4, inset on page 27 (having been wrongly directed to 26) and 26 (LA to Jacksonville on I-10, obviously easy navigation, but awkward to follow on the map! An Atlas of an area the size of the USA arranged systematically, rather than politically, may have 3 or 4 'jumps' as the scale changes or some other slice thing happens), and having to flip between north-at-the-top and north-at-the-left, depending on what shape the state is, and how they've arranged it.
Compare the E30, from Cork to Moscow in my mostly 1:1000000 Europe Atlas: pages 2, 3, 8 (having dropped down a layer), 9, 11 (stuff on 10 partial duplicate of stuff on 9 plus a sea crossing), 12, 13, 14, 15, 88 (start of north eastern 1:1500000 section), 89, 90 (start of 'far' eastern 1:3000000 section, happily on the page afterwards) Sadly page 90 is orientated north-at-the-left, whereas the rest of the atlas is all north-at-the-top. Worst-case E-W route would be E70 or E80 where the way that Iberia and Italy get done in a more sensible way that groups those peninsulas together in the atlas, making a mess of page numbering along those latitudes. But still there's only one flick back (on the E70 when it heads north to Bordeaux), the rest being flick-forwards.
I don't think it is utilitarian to have pages in an atlas organised politically, rather than geographically. It's also not helpful to have over 50 different scales either, plus the orientation isn't consistent, which makes it really user unfriendly.
I believe Michelin do a glovebox USA that is one(!) main scale and geographically laid out.
I dunno. I think Americans tend to have state boundaries more firmly fixed in their mind than you might. Boise City OK is a long, long way away and yet Gainesville TX "feels" further away. Even though Gainesville is only 100 miles away and Boise City is 300, Gainesville feels more foreign just because it's in another state. I don't think having multiple scales is really an issue to most people because when you cross state lines it feels like such a significant event that turning the page and having a different scale seems appropriate to the situation. Maybe that's just me though because I very rarely (one or two times per year) get the opportunity to exit Oklahoma.
(What would you think of a hypothetical atlas that had England, Wales, N. Ireland, and Scotland all on separate pages with different scales?)
Quote from: Scott5114 on December 20, 2011, 09:05:55 PM(What would you think of a hypothetical atlas that had England, Wales, N. Ireland, and Scotland all on separate pages with different scales?)
awful. I take it it would be more than just 4 pages, say a Europe atlas? even so -yuck. Lets say it has the UK (or at least GB, with NI with RoI) together, though still does pages by country with the countries in alphabetical order then still it's a massive 'no'.
I'm strongly anti-EU, so borders matter to me more than most Europeans. As mentioned upthread I have a similar thing to what you have with Texan cities with the north of England (not even 'out of state'). But it simply makes no sense to me to organise an atlas politically, rather than geographically.
I've not left the UK for 4 years now, four and a half for another European country (last two foreign trips were long haul). I last visited Wales nearly four years ago, Scotland about 7. The "I rarely leave the state doesn't make sense to me. After all, if you live there and spend most of your time there, then rather than buying a poor-scaled map spread over one or two pages in an atlas of the US, you'd buy a decent map of the state (or part of the state in big states) that has more detail on it - you live in the UK then a Britain/Ireland/both atlas will be of far more use than a Europe one - more detailed, more accurate, more economical (using much more of the thing). Thus it doesn't matter about having the states individual as people don't tend to leave states, as the only time they'd actually want a US atlas is if they were leaving the state.
Well, yeah, the map I use most often is an Oklahoma DOT map that shows the entire state at a 1 inch to 16 mile scale, and I also have an Oklahoma atlas that has an even finer level of detail that I use when looking for possible old alignments of roads. I generally get the McNally out, well, hardly ever. The purpose of a Rand McNally is, as you surmise, when you're doing a longer, cross country trip across multiple states and don't want to deal with the hassle of acquiring and then managing on the trip a dozen state DOT maps.
Dealing with the detailed OK atlas on a trip is somewhat annoying. It's set up on a grid like you prefer–page 1 covers the far northwest of the state, the next page is the next block east, and so on until the far northeast, then the atlas jumps down to the west edge of the state on the next grid row to the south, and so on. This works somewhat well when traveling east-west, but when traveling north-south you will have to turn many pages as the next grid square south is always 10 pages forward in the atlas.
More importantly, the limitation of the grid system jumps out when you have traveled a good distance and glance at your map for some guidance–shall I turn at Route 55 or continue straight on Route 96?–only to find that you have crossed over to another page several dozen miles ago. Because the grid lines are arbitrary, there is no real-world cue to tell you that you have crossed from atlas page 45 to atlas page 55. This, primarily, is why I believe McNally and similar atlases split maps at state lines–when you cross a state line it is generally well advertised (certainly on Interstates you will get a distinct bump in the pavement, then a Welcome to State sign, then probably an exit for a welcome/tourism center, and all the state highway shields will change). All this signals to you "Oh, now I need to switch from the Tennessee page to the North Carolina page". This setup is preferable to your average layperson then having western NC on the same page as eastern TN and then suddenly having to switch pages around Greensboro or so. Page changes become predictable.
I feel sure there are people in central and eastern North Carolina who think Charlotte and Winston Salem are in the mountains, and that the westernmost point in the state is Asheville. They have no idea that three counties in the state border Georgia, and that Murphy is only about two hours from Atlanta. A trip from Manteo to Murphy would probably take 10 to 11 hours at least, and that's if you don't stop. That's like driving from Raleigh to New York City.
Yeah, I severely underestimated the size of NC the only time I visited it. Knew TN was going to take a long time to go through, but NC...for some reason it never really registered.
I was on the train once between Toronto and Vancouver with a tour group from Britain and they had a hard time visualizing just how big Canada is. After 34 hours, we were still in Ontario......just about to enter Manitoba and would be another two nights on the train before reaching Vancouver. (a cross-country drive would be similar)
Even in my own province, Nova Scotia which I consider small compared to the others, it's 800 km from Yarmouth to Cape North......about a 10 hour drive.
Quote from: Scott5114 on December 21, 2011, 08:11:17 AM
Yeah, I severely underestimated the size of NC the only time I visited it. Knew TN was going to take a long time to go through, but NC...for some reason it never really registered.
Our family used to vacation in the Outer Banks a lot in the 60's and 70's. Back then, with the gaps in the interstate system and there only being two-lane roads between Raleigh and OBX, it was easily a two-day drive from Kentucky, and that was if we left home at 4 or 5 a.m. -- and I live in eastern KY. We'd usually get to the Greensboro area before stopping for the night. Now it would be an easy day's drive from here to there.
Back then very little of US 25E was four-lane, there were at least two gaps in I-40 in the Asheville area, and I-40 ended at Greensboro. US 64 was a two-lane slog east of Raleigh and it went through all kinds of small towns.
The New England states were very deceiving for me. Entering Massachusetts on the MassPike at 5:00 PM local time and arriving in Boston two to three hours later for example
Crossing Wisconsin west to east along the Illinois state line takes 2 3/4 hours (on a freeway), while going north-south from Madison to Hurley takes 5 hours+ (mostly freeway)
Illinois is a large state north to south. Once I was driving up I-57 in MO and I thought that it wasn't too far to Chicago, but it was about 370 miles away.
Quote from: codyg1985 on December 21, 2011, 02:19:46 PM
Illinois is a large state north to south. Once I was driving up I-57 in MO and I thought that it wasn't too far to Chicago, but it was about 370 miles away.
I've fallen into that trap on I-55. There is a LOT of Illinois.
OK isn't too terribly deceptive as long as you are in the main body of the state. But it's extremely easy to underestimate the length of the panhandle. The distance from Kenton to the eastern Beaver County line is about the same as that from Oklahoma City to Fort Smith.
Quote from: english si on December 20, 2011, 07:22:04 PM
Looking at an overview map which tells you which page is where works fine on state atlases, city plans and every road atlas in Europe, why can't it for American ones?
What this really comes down to is that we all prefer the system which we grew up being used to. Europe and the US do many things different ways and the way one does these things can seem crazy to someone who grew up in the other. But ultimately, each way of doing things works just as well for the people to whom it is native and natural. It's a purely cultural issue and neither is necessarily objectively inferior. I'm sure you would also argue that baseball is bizzare and cricket makes more sense, but grab your average American off the street and they would beg to differ. And I'm sure you would argue that the way we number floors in our buildings is bizzare, but again... When you travel to another country, things are going to be done differently.
Quote from: Scott5114 on December 21, 2011, 06:09:41 PM
Quote from: codyg1985 on December 21, 2011, 02:19:46 PM
Illinois is a large state north to south. Once I was driving up I-57 in MO and I thought that it wasn't too far to Chicago, but it was about 370 miles away.
I've fallen into that trap on I-55. There is a LOT of Illinois.
OK isn't too terribly deceptive as long as you are in the main body of the state. But it's extremely easy to underestimate the length of the panhandle. The distance from Kenton to the eastern Beaver County line is about the same as that from Oklahoma City to Fort Smith.
I wonder how far it is from Idabel to Boise City as the crow flies?
Quote from: bugo on December 21, 2011, 10:07:22 PM
Quote from: Scott5114 on December 21, 2011, 06:09:41 PM
Quote from: codyg1985 on December 21, 2011, 02:19:46 PM
Illinois is a large state north to south. Once I was driving up I-57 in MO and I thought that it wasn't too far to Chicago, but it was about 370 miles away.
I've fallen into that trap on I-55. There is a LOT of Illinois.
OK isn't too terribly deceptive as long as you are in the main body of the state. But it's extremely easy to underestimate the length of the panhandle. The distance from Kenton to the eastern Beaver County line is about the same as that from Oklahoma City to Fort Smith.
I wonder how far it is from Idabel to Boise City as the crow flies?
Dunno about as the crow flies, but OK 3, which starts north of Boise City and ends southeast of Idabel, is 616.5 miles long.
What would be the best route from Idabel to Boise City? US 259 north to US 59 north to I-40 west to US 270 west to US 412 west?
Quote from: Duke87 on December 21, 2011, 09:29:00 PM
Quote from: english si on December 20, 2011, 07:22:04 PM
Looking at an overview map which tells you which page is where works fine on state atlases, city plans and every road atlas in Europe, why can't it for American ones?
What this really comes down to is that we all prefer the system which we grew up being used to. Europe and the US do many things different ways and the way one does these things can seem crazy to someone who grew up in the other. But ultimately, each way of doing things works just as well for the people to whom it is native and natural....
I have to say, I grew up with one system exclusively, and now I've had some experience with both, and it has never come anywhere near being so big a deal that I would even consider eliminating one system over the other. I just use the one that's available to me, and that's that. (I feel the same way about exit numbering systems, too.)
And think about it...if you're changing states so fast and often that flipping a dozen or two pages becomes burdensome, you've got bigger things to worry about, like the immense speeding fine you're going to have to pay!
When we were planning to go to Maine after stopping at a music festival in downstate New York, my mom thought it was a three-day trip from the festival to Maine when it's only a few hours.
Quote from: Scott5114 on December 21, 2011, 06:09:41 PM
Quote from: codyg1985 on December 21, 2011, 02:19:46 PM
Illinois is a large state north to south. Once I was driving up I-57 in MO and I thought that it wasn't too far to Chicago, but it was about 370 miles away.
I've fallen into that trap on I-55. There is a LOT of Illinois.
OK isn't too terribly deceptive as long as you are in the main body of the state. But it's extremely easy to underestimate the length of the panhandle. The distance from Kenton to the eastern Beaver County line is about the same as that from Oklahoma City to Fort Smith.
I think part of what makes IL so deceptively long is that most people (morons) when they think of IL they think Chicago Area. In this area for a very egotistical reason, "Downstate Illinois" is anything south of I-80 and west of I-39. That's right. Freeport/Galena/Moline/ La Salle are all considered locally "downstate". In fact, I-80 is no more than 90 miles from Wisconsin at its southern most point. Peru IL to Cairo IL is another 316 miles according to RMcN online.
I remember older Rand McNally atlases putting states like North Dakota or Nevada on one page. They look deceptively small that way, especially considering it takes like 9 or 10 hours to drive the entire length of US 93 in the state of Nevada. New Mexico still looks small until you read the map thoroughly and find out one inch on the map is like 30 miles or a 40 minute drive.
Europeans also often underestimate the size of the United States. I remember a discussion where someone find it logical to sign Miami near Richmond (it actually is signed near the I-85 split), unless you visualized them it's the same distance as from Berlin to Rome, or a drive from Los Angeles to Boston is about the same as driving from western Europe to Iran. As a matter of fact a lot of European countries are smaller than most midwestern and western states. Oregon and Washington alone are already significantly larger than Germany.
I-295 also used to be signed for Miami from I-95 southbound at their northern crossing. It was greened out at some point, and when the overheads were replaced Richmond Airport was signed instead.
My grandma tells a story about one of her cousins who came over from England on a tour of the US eastern seaboard. This cousin's tour had a free day in Philadelphia, and she was highly incensed that no one from the family would pick her up and bring her to Michigan for the day. It seems that she had no idea just how far the Northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan is from southeast Pennsylvania.
When I received a globe for Christmas as a young kid, I realized that my home state is just a little bit bigger than the UK. Until then, the only times I saw the two maps was on the TV news, when the graphics would show one country's silhouette above the anchor's left shoulder, and the other above his right. In that application, the UK and the US were shown at the same size, which is not the case.
Quote from: Chris on January 02, 2012, 01:52:39 PM
Europeans also often underestimate the size of the United States.
Indeed. I know someone who was asked by a British friend "wait, you
flew from DC to Seattle? Why didn't you just drive?". The same person recounts the same friend, in Los Angeles, inquiring into the possibility of making a day trip to the Grand Canyon, thinking it was an hour or two away (it's over 400 miles).
My father knows someone who often deals with people from his company flying in from Europe on business... he likes to, rather than flying people in and out of the same city, encourage them to rent a car and say, drive from Kansas City to Denver before catching a plane home - to give them a better appreciation for the size of the country. They are usually awestruck by the experience.
^^ Next time he's here, challenge him to drive to the Grand Canyon from LA. He'll get quite the education.
Another story I remember: one time when I was in high school, early on a Sunday evening, my best friend picked me up to go out for a drive to Omaha, which we did frequently.On the way up to Omaha he starts telling me about a girl that he had been admiring for a long time that had just moved to Excelsior, MN(W. of Minneapolis). I didn't think he was telling me this story for any particular reason until he stayed on I-80 past the last exit in Nebraska and started heading over the Missouri River into Iowa. When I asked him why we were driving into Iowa, he told me he had the girl's address and thought maybe we could go up to Minnesota and find where she lived and then turn around and come back and be back home by late evening. When I looked at him incredulously and asked if he was serious he says "sure, why not-Minnesota borders Iowa doesn't it?" When I told him it would take about 6 more hours just to get there, he was surprised. Fortunately since he knew about my love of maps, he believed me, so we stopped at the next exit and turned around.
I had some friends who moved up to Storm Lake, IA from Davenport a few years ago. I was surprised when they said it took them 6 hours to get there. I guess I had never realized the size of the state because at the time I had never been west of Iowa City.