Never realised how far Hawaii was from mainland USA

As an American state I always assumed it was a series of islands just off the coast a bit like jersey, Guernsey etc are here.

Syria is as close to England as Hawaii is to mainland USA

Not sure if anyone else didn't realise that.

 

Think America would have been a bit more worried when Japan bombed Pearl Harbour

 

I did always wonder how Japan managed to get all the way across the Pacific to sneak up on the coast of America

 

In New York over Christmas and New Year we went onboard a nuclear submarine that was used to patrol off the Russian coast during the cold war. I turned to the missus and said imagine driving that ****** underwater across Atlantic and having to navigate all through Europe without being able to see where you're going and relying on technology in those days!

If you spin the globe round it's only across the water from the USA to Russia....

 

It’s an 6 hour flight.

Great place to go, but it’s mega expensive when you get there.

We stayed on Waikiki beach and went to the Memorial at Pearl Harbour, which is incredibly thought provoking. It’s not a big island, we drove around it in about half a day.

 

The physical characteristics of it’s locals should give you a clue..

 

This prompted me to have a quick look at a world map. And quite right, Hawaii really is some distance away from mainland America.
But what I really did notice, for the first time in my life, was that Canada to Russia is literally walking distance!!!

 

Time difference also. 6 hrs behind New York east coast. and 2 hrs behind Nevada west coast
Another fact that may surprise folk.
Manchester to the Nile. (By air to Luxor on the nile in Egypt . 2,600 miles.
The Nile length. 4,130. miles

 

When the Bering strait is completely frozen over you can indeed walk it. 2.5 miles from the US state of Alaska to Russia.
Bit of a walk from Canada though 3000 + miles.

 

Bloody good walk though... You've got to cross Alaska first.

 

Similar to this fact. The Great Wall of China is 13,170 miles long. Yet London to Beijing is only 5059 miles.
That was a ‘lockdown quiz’ question that blew my brains.

 

I googled to see what you meant, and it's actually close to America than I thought it was. I thought it was closer to Japan.

 

Well considering it's in the middle of the ocean what do you mean?

 

I realised it when it took us over 24 hours to travel there for our Honeymoon (we did do it over 3 flights though for cheapness sakes). Amazing holiday but very upsetting how prevalent homelessness is there. It was weird how quickly it gets dark, literally in the space of about 5 minutes it goes from day time to full night.

 

That's the case for anywhere near the equator. Further north or south, we have long, lingering sunsets as the sun slides down at a shallow angle. Near the equator the sun drops straight down into the water and day becomes night very quickly. And vice versa.

 

Probably not as far as the Falklands or Gibraltar away from us

 

That's just Oahu though, there's a number of other islands too. I stayed on Oahu and Maui when I went in 2013. Maui is amazing, west side basically has a warm and relatively dry climate, drive around the other side (the road to Hana) and it's a rainforest climate with torrential downpours, humid, amazing vegetation.

Also went to Pearl Harbor, amazing museum and memorials etc there, was thought provoking and pretty surreal to be there to be honest.

In terms of flights, yeah it's about 4.5 hours back to LA. One of the things I remember from being there was how it felt odd to be so many hours from any mainland. Just those few modest size islands for thousands of miles. Loved going there, would love to go back.

 

Alaska, Canada both cold .

 

In't that how The Americas got human habitation?

 

It’s a hell of a lot further away than Gibraltar is from us.