I live in the eastern US and I constantly have to remind myself when I'm planning trips out West--even in the lower 48--just how big the relative distances are :-) I'm better at it than I used to be, but it's easy to plan "short" drives that are actually 6-8 hours.

It is always amusing when West European friends and relatives visit. Distances are so much shorter there between countries. We are in New York and they'll say "let's drive to Texas tomorrow" thinking it would be a day trip or something of that scale.

A friends cousin from Australia visited Austria and upon hearing that he will drive to another country brought 5 kilos of food and a sleeping bag. The drive was an hour and a half.

Hahaha. A 6-8 hour drive is short.

It takes a 12 hour drive for me to get to a city bigger than the one I'm in, and it's in another country :)

The closest next-biggest one in the same country is something like 18 hours drive.