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Comment by kstrauser | Hacker News Reader

We lived in the US midwest. My in-laws live in a New England state, but on the end farthest from the coast, i.e. closest to us. That was a 15 hour drive, not counting meal and gas stops.

One time a group of friends and I drove from San Diego to Denver and back. It took 38 hours, and that was averaging 60.0 miles per hour according to hours_total/miles_total. We never left the western 1/3 of the US.

The US is large.

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I live in Texas. It takes about 8 hours drive to get out of Texas regardless of the direction I go. That's just one state. Texas is the only state that has 8 different climate zones.

The drive from El Paso to Los Angeles is 813 miles. The drive from El Paso to Brownsville, TX is 829 miles.

El Paso is closer to LA than to another city in Texas.

Yeah, but once you get to El Paso, you're almost half way there!

Although El Paso is closer to Los Angeles than it is to the Mississippi River, by Interstate it is 200km closer to Dallas and slightly closer to Houston and Austin.

But all those drives are 900km or more.

Texas is obviously bigger but California also has 8 (or more depending on which classification scheme)

I don’t know where you got that climate zone information, but I don’t think it’s true. New Mexico has more koppen climates areas than Texas, and Arizona too (and also California). Texas is undeniably huge though - I have driven El Paso to Beaumont on the way to Louisiana

And Alaska. It is big enough that there have to be at least eight different zones falling somewhere between coastal rainforest and arctic pack ice.

California is close.

It's amazing how big these states are compared to say, Colorado where I grew up.

Colorado is pretty big too.

And I don't think there is anywhere in California that isn't like a 3-4 hour drive from not California (downtown during rush hour not withstanding).

That said, if you do want to stay in California you can drive 15 hours in one direction and still be here.

>> how big these states are compared to say, Colorado

And Colorado is tiny compared to Canadian provinces, most of which are at least triple its size. Want big, look at how long it takes to drive from Seattle to Anchorage.

It's because California and Texas were both pre-existing political entities when they were annexed by the US. Most of the other Midwest and western states had their boundaries defined by Congress as they carved up the US's unincorporated territory, which is why they all have similar sizes and very geometric shapes (with borders often defined lines of latitude and longitude).

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