Posted on 06/09/2016 5:01:54 AM PDT by IBD editorial writer
How old is America?
In Europe 100 miles is a long distance;
In America 100 years is a long time.
I didn't know.
It is a pleasure to learn something new.
I also didn't know about Petra, Jordan until a family called their new restaurant "Petra Grill". The middle eastern food is great and learning about Petra made it all the more enjoyable.
"Every man is my superior in that I may learn from him." - Thomas Carlyle
Most of WW2 English Channel to Berlin would fit in Texas. OTOH the eastern front, at least the major fighting portion of it, is roughly Canada to Mexico and Pacific Ocean to Colorado/Kansas border.
I use the same argument when told something like "why can't we do it in this country? The Swedes do it."
In 2000 we took my youngest son on a “Great Circle Tour” of the west. The first day we drove from Indianapolis to the Badlands South Dakota, a distance of 1078 miles.
I had some friends from Germany who were exchange students when I was in high school. Four years after high school, I was in the Air Force stationed at Davis-Monthan in Tucson.
I had been home to Idaho on leave, and received a phone call from my friends. They were in town and wanted to get together. They also had stand-by tickets for air travel. I asked if they wanted to ride with me from Idaho to Arizona, through Nevada, and then catch a flight out of Tucson to wherever from there. They heartily agreed to do so.
This was in the month of June. When I told them we'd only be driving in three states, they figured it'd be a short drive.
It took a day getting from my folks' place in Idaho to Las Vegas, NV (pulling a trailer with my Dad's truck, that had my car on the trailer). They couldn't believe just how big the west was. They also couldn't believe we'd only been traveling in two states for the entire day's drive.
The next day, we headed from Las Vegas, over the Hoover Dam, and into AZ. They were amazed at the size of the dam, and the reservoir that is Lake Mead.
Then we went through Phoenix. There was a big sign from a bank that read that the temperature was 111 degrees. They looked at the sign without much recognition. Then after about ten seconds, it switched to Celsius. It read 44 degrees. They about fell all over themselves explaining how hot that was. Yeah. Tell me about it. It was truly amazing to them, because they rarely saw anything above the low-mid 80s where they were from.
Disney World Orlando to Grand Canyon National Park: 2,125 miles. Yeah, it’s a day trip if you’re driving a private jet.
Try driving from Pensacola to Key West.
In my youth I went from coast to coast and border to border more than once, on motorcycles and on my thumb. If you want to see big, go to Alaska.
yes, you do pay for the pass.
For us it is one of the best deals there is
I used to think that England was the size of the East Coast. One day I looked it up and learned that England has about the same area as the state of Georgia.
North Carolina is 560 miles east to west.
Of course, Western states are huge.
Great movie!
Right, Roy?
:-)
They were planning to drive at Autobahn speed. Absolutely doable.
"Upon seeing Iguazu, the United States First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt reportedly exclaimed "Poor Niagara!" (which, at 50 m or 165 feet, are a third shorter).
Often Iguazu also is compared with Victoria Falls in Southern Africa, which separates Zambia and Zimbabwe. Iguazu is wider, but because it is split into approximately 275 discrete falls and large islands, Victoria has the largest curtain of water in the world, at more than 1,600 m (5,249 ft) wide and over 100 m (328 ft) in height (in low flow Victoria is split into five by islands; in high flow it may be uninterrupted). The only wider falls are extremely large rapid-like falls, such as the Boyoma Falls (Stanley Falls).
With the flooding of the Guaíra Falls in 1982, Iguazu currently has the sixth-greatest average annual flow of any waterfall in the world, following Niagara, with an average rate of 1,746 m3/s (61,660 cu ft/s).
Its maximum recorded flow was 45,700 m3/s (1,614,000 cu ft/s) in June 9, 2014.
By comparison, the average flow of Niagara Falls is 2,400 m3/s (85,000 cu ft/s), with a maximum recorded flow of 8,300 m3/s (293,000 cu ft/s).
The average flow at Victoria Falls is 1,088 m3/s (38,420 cu ft/s), with a maximum recorded flow of 7,100 m3/s (250,000 cu ft/s).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iguazu_Falls
There's about 420 miles of I-40 alone, from the TN border to Wilmington.
Great time waster here: http://overlapmaps.com/ , it lets you compare sizes of states and countries by overlaying one on another.
15-16 hours? I drove from Tallahassee to Naples once. That was one hell of a drive.
Yup. There are a lot of things like that, that suprises me.
The state of Alabama has less population (< 5M) than metro Houston, Texas....but, the GDP is equal to IRAN or New Zealand. Alabama's number one export is not cotton (LOL), it's autos and auto parts.
I look for value, always have.
As a young man I found that the gates to National Parks are not staffed 24 hours a day. It has to do with budgets, I was told.
I used to backpack a lot and I used Yosemite to traverse the Sierra Nevada Mountains, as it was the only mountain pass for a hundred miles north or south, almost. I’d get to the back entrance of Yosemite at 3 am and it would be unstaffed, so I’d just drive on in.
They would catch me on the way out though, and make me pay.
The solution was to both enter the park at night and exit at night. I’ve been to most NPs in the west outside of Alaska, and found this to be a winning tactic.
The population is that small...
...with huge royalties per capita from oil...and a 15% business tax.
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