No. A handful of city pairs have reasonably popular rail service (Milwaukee-Chicago, Boston-New York) which you might use becasue the freeways tend to be congested. The duration is comparable to a drive in clear traffic.

For any other route, a family would fly and then rent a car if upper class or drive if middle/lower class.

Amtrak sometimes serves these routes, but costs more than flying and takes days instead of hours (3 days Chicago to SF, 24 hours Chicago to New York or New Orleans, and if Chicago isn't on the way, you'll need to detour through Union Station). The max flight time here would be ~6 hours.

Too far apart does mean that A to B is so much further than A to B in Europe. It means that there's nothing in between them, so it would be insane to build a passenger rail line (i.e. high speeds, high priority on the queue, locomotives, ect). A 1000 km length of track in Europe serves 10, 15 cities. In the American west it serves the passengers of 2.