There is an old saying in the Lone Star State: "Everything's Bigger in Texas!" This is certainly true of the distances one must travel when visiting locations around the state. Towns are built many miles apart and tend to spread out over wide spaces, since one thing we are not lacking in the state is room. Whereas towns in New England tend to crowd close together to maximize the available space and take local geography into account, in the largely flat or gently rolling terrain of Texas, cities tend to spread out over wider distances. Roads can be wider, homes (often called "ranch style" homes) share the tendency to grow horizontally rather than vertically here.
As such, Texans tend to spend a good deal of their time in transit from one place to another. It is not unusual for daily commutes to exceed 30 miles of distance traveled one way. We have traveled this week as far away as San Antonio, a distance of 300 miles and requiring over five hours of driving time.
We have collectively logged more than 400 miles of traveling on this journey so far. As a frame of reference, driving across the state from Texarkana in the east to El Paso in the west on Interstate 30 would be a journey of 814 miles, taking nearly 13 hours to drive!
