Relative Distances

I'm doing some preliminary stuff for a new story and I think I'm gonna need to draw up a map. I can do that myself, but I'm Dutch, so my concept of long distances is considerably different from that of - in the case of this story - an American.
If I drive for two hours, I'm in another country.
From what I gather, if an American drives for two hours, they're just left their street.

At what point would you, a person in a grown-up sized country, start to feel you're driving a long distance? Five hours? Ten?
It's pretty hard to get a feel for. Movies make it seem like it's just a thing you do, and that's mostly the reference I have.

 

This is gold, thanks for the laugh!


If you want to describe distance, and make the reader get a feel for it, try to maybe include longer passages for longer distances, and shorter passages when it comes to shorter distances, Maybe? You could perhaps also do the reverse and still make the reader feel the timeframes. Then it also depends on how fast you're going. If you follow all the speed limits, or if you're a road gangster.

So for example, for a five hour drive, include the sun in the beginning, and in the end, show a sunset. Have maybe one or two thoughts or words from a character about wanting to stretch their legs or something. Maybe someone's gotten stiff, maybe they need to stop by a gas station to fill up? Etc.

Just my thoughts.

 

Depends.
Its an hour away to visit my sister in the next city over. But its flat farmland between us and a high way that is straight. Even though its an hour drive, it feels like the ride is going on forever and ever.

Then, when i lived in Maryland and worked in Virginia... I could literally bike 15mins and be in Virginia (i have before). But if i were driving the Beltway, it took me 2 hours during rushhour traffic to go 30miles (one way!). But even that drive disnt feel as long as driving down a straight highway surrounded by farmland.

A long drive for me, though, was going from Michigan to the Gulf of Mexico via Texas. Took my husband and i 2 days.
But if we are staying in the same state, it would take us 6 hours to cross the state (longitudinal). Thats a "vacation" for me. Too long for a day trip.


On the flip side.... I went to university 5 hours away from home. I would come home sometimes for weekends or for school breaks. The drive didnt feel long to me (i could make it on half a tank of gas). The mountain terrain made it interesting

 

I don’t think this is something that can be generalized across all Americans. A lot of people in NYC don’t even own cars. Not possible in Montana. City dwellers will see it different than rural. Where I live I can get to most things within 30 minutes, but to go to another medium/large city is minimum 2.5 hours. I hate driving, feels like a waste of time. Anything over 20 minutes I have to be motivated to go that way. Some people have to go 20 minutes for a gallon of milk.

 

I live right near the border with a neighboring state, so it depends which way I go. If I head west and drive for twenty minutes I'm in Missouri, after crossing over the Mississippi river, and I'm immediately plunged into a metropolis (though if you've been to New York or one of the real metropoli, St. Louis is a podunk town with a Gateway Arch I suppose).

But still, no matter which way I go, I do start passing through some very different country pretty soon. That's not to say different countries, which is a different thing. You know, I'd pass out of the samll city I live in, through some rolling cornfields, then maybe into heavily wooded area with lots of steep hills, and then out into quarry land where the ground is just flat and littered with big chunks of rock. Each new area feels like a very different environment, so yeah, it feels like you're definitely going somewhwere, and seeing very different kinds of landscape.

Basically states here are the equivalent of countries in Europe, except that they all use the same currency (I guess they do in Europe now too) and speak the same language, and you don't need a passport or anything. The only way you know you've crossed a border is there are signs on the highway saying "Leaving Illinois" or "Entering Missouri". And there aren't always signs, depending what kind of road you're on.

But the culture does change. Same language, but the dialects and accents change, and sometimes you don't have to go very far. And the cultures change as well. Of course, I mean, obviously farming country has very different people than the big city, that's an obvious change. But different areas were settled by people from various European countries. I live in a part of Illinois that's largely German and Dutch (you might feel right at home).

 

It really depends on the location. Growing up in Los Angeles we didn't talk about a trips distance but how long it would take. And that changes dramatically based on time of day, and the route you need to take. A short ten mile trip could easily be a half hour of travel time.
By contrast, I drive a truck professionally, and plan trips at 60 mph. Even though I am often doing 70 mph in the truck. The reason is to account for traffic, construction, and any cities I have to go through. 500 to 600 miles a day is the norm.

 

My guess is that the driving experience here in Canada is a lot like the American experience. Driving long distances doesn't faze us much. I'm about a little over an hour away from Toronto, and we drive there and back regularly to see relatives, and they drive here. It's not a bad drive, as long as you don't hit that Toronto traffic!

Anything north of Barrie (which is about an hour north of Toronto) is considered "up north." That's where you get into big distances. To get to the eastern border of Ontario from my home in southern Ontario would take about 20 hours. Can't calculate the time to drive to the northern most part of Ontario - because no roads go there! It's over 1500 km from here.

Anything under 5 hours is considered manageable. My brother and his wife regularly drive "up north" to see their son who lives close to Sudbury, and he drives here.

Last spring, we drove to Florida over a 2-day period, and we really enjoyed the drive!

 

I live in Wyoming where we used to make a three hour round trip (drive time only) to buy a malt at the Yellowstone Drugstore (now closed). A twelve hour summer day spent meandering on dirt backroads was a common Saturday tour when we were younger. Of course, the joke in Wyoming is that some folks measure distance not in miles or hours but in six packs. To drive diagonally across Wyoming takes eight to ten hours, depending on weather and which diagonal you take.

At least once a year, I drive from here to Texas to visit family, roughly a twenty-two hour trip to my closest relative. Drive down, stay a few days, drive home. That's a fur (far) piece. A piece down the road would be maybe Gainsville to Texarkana. Just a piece down the road is within a few miles, maybe Texarkana to Fulton.

 

What's considered a long drive mostly depends on the person. I have friends who absolutely hate to drive and have to be seriously motivated to go more than 30 minutes. OTOH, I love road trips and won't blink at doing 600-700 miles in a day.

As has already been pointed out, it also depends on where they live. If they're used to being in a city where everything is close, an hour drive is going to feel different for them than someone like me, who lives in a rural area. Anything less than 3 hours is a short drive for me.

I think you can do whatever you want here as long as you establish early on whether your character loves or hates driving.

 

Under three hours is nothing for me--it's short. I will drive two hours at the spur of the moment. Over four hours and I start to see it as more of a longer drive. 5 hours is definitely a long drive, in my mind.

 

@Bakkerbaard, that 2 hour thing is actually pretty close. I would suggest using Google maps to get time estimates, keeping in mind that it does not include food/gas/bathroom breaks.

In summer, when it's trout season in New Mexico, I will drive 4 hours in the morning to go fishing on a weekend, and drive back that afternoon. (where I go, motels are expensive, and are not the greatest accommodations anyway)

 

I live in Wisconsin, about 2 hours from Chicago and will drive there in a heartbeat, but it's 4 lane expressways most of the way so it seems to go by very quickly (unless it's the parking lot of rush hour).

I'd say that 4-5 hours is when something stops feeling like a day trip and more like "let's get a hotel or stay with a friend for the night." I have driven 10 hours straight to visit my in-laws in Tennessee, but of course that's just one way, and a lot of times we stay at a hotel anyway so we can be fresh when we get there and not ready to drop.

 

Remember too that states are all different sizes and shapes. Homer up there lives in a corner where lines were drawn before the US was even a thing. Those states are tiny. From my corner of Tennessee, I can be in any of 5 different states within 2 hours, but to go to the easternmost edge of my own state will take 8. OTOH, you can drive across California in 4 hours, but north to south will take 12. We're just a mess over here.

 

Yep, where I live in Wisconsin I'm only an hour from the Illinois border, but it would take me several hours to get to Minnesota, or Michigan unless I took a boat across the lake.

 

Elk mountain is a pain in the ass area, in that state.

 

Well not an OFFICIAL thing, but I do love bopping around your neck of the woods and seeing all the historical sites. In the summer.

 

Builders of I-80 were warned repeatedly by area residents that Elk Mountain/Arlington was NOT a good place to put a major crosscountry freeway, but what fed agency ever listened to a local yokel? We had animometers in that area. One registered sustained 100mph+ winds before it blew off its pole.

 

Oddly enough, so do I. Town where I live every street seems to be one way. I'm pretty sure the infrastructure's been designed by someone who doesn't live here.
Also, I think there's a secret black hole in town where all the one streets end and cars just disappear. Forever.
If you want to do something quickly, grab a bicycle.

Yes we do, and no we don't want to.
There was a referendum and everything, the majority voted "no, you idiots, this is a bad idea, how did you even get to this point?", and the government went "okay, no more referendums for you."

Yeah, I've been watching what I can find of this dialect coach on Youtube, whose name I keep forgetting. Erik Singer (yeah, I googled it). He did a dialect-tour of America... And I forhot what the point was I planned to make here.
Anyway, yeah, we smeared cheese all over the world. Not always for the better.

It's all relative. I once had to do a five hour drive for work because our manager at that time would have been better off in a padded room, and that was no fun, no matter how loud I played my music. I can quite easily be convinced to make a long drive if I'm promised I get to plug in my own playlist. Which usually requires me to be alone in the car, because... Well, not everybody enjoys Morbid Angel.
On the other hand, my girl and I might at one point just sit up and go "Let's see how France is doing!" and it'll be the quickest five hour drive ever.

Is that a typical Wisconsin thing to say?
I know in Texas they say "a ways down the road", which can apparently mean anything from "over there" to "in Cali-fckin-fornia."

Seriously?
I can think of only one situation where I'd drive for 900 kilometers. If I had a 1970 Dodge Challenger. And I wouldn't even want to do it then, but I'd have to because I don't wanna give it back and they're after me now.

If someone wakes me up in the morning I will curse for four hours.

Alright, we have determined that Rhode Island is most like the Netherlands then.

You've seen maps of Europe, yeah?
We've got countries inside of other countries. Not, like, squished between two or more other countries, but literally countries within one other country.
Honestly, from a OCD-ish point of view I can appreciate the American map.
"So, how are we gonna divide the country?"
"Just draw some lines."
"No, seriously--"
"Draw some lines!"

 

When I lived up north I was on the Ohio/Pennsylvania line on the edge of Lake Erie. Pennsylvania is a big state. Almost anywhere in Ohio was closer than a lot of Pennsylvania. I could be in Canada within 2 hours. Some unknowing person thought I could just pop over and meet them in Philadelphia. Umm, nope, that's a 6.5 hour drive. But it's in Pennsylvania ...

 

700 miles to go back up to visit family is pretty normal.

My highest amount of miles in one day happened when my daughter moved to Oregon for a year. I offered to drive her because I'd always wanted to drive out west. At the time my daughter was unable to drive, so I had to do the whole trip. We had enough days available that I could keep to a reasonable (for me) number of miles per day.

We were in PA at the time, so we just hopped on I-90 and headed out. We tend to be night owls and so often keep going until 10-11 pm. It was the second day and we'd come to the last exit in Wisconsin. It was a nice looking freeway town, but it was only 8 pm or so and we decided we'd go a bit farther before stopping for the night. Then we crossed into Minnesota.

There. Was. NOTHING.

Every exit we came to was just a road without any signs of life. No gas stations, no signs indicating food or hotels. We FINALLY came to a little mom and pop motel only to find they'd rented the last room 5 minutes before we got there. They directed us to the next closest place (an hour away), where we collapsed as soon as we got into our room.

I drove 900 miles that day.

 

No idea. I've only been to Wisconsin once and with all those trees was lost for the entire three day experience. No, wait. I've been there twice. Massive acreages of trees apparently also impact my memory.

 

That is a long and Costly drive. The tolls on the PA turnpike are stupid expensive.

 

Once you cross the NY/PA line going west, I-90 isn't the turnpike. I-80 is the toll road through PA heading west. I didn't pay any tolls.

And yes, it was long, but beautiful and so much fun!