It’s pretty incredible to think about. If you live in the US, there are unbroken stretches of asphalt between you and any major city on the continent. All you need is a vehicle (or two legs)
Is that more or less impressive than the equally integrated set of footpaths that once existed? Almost every past footpath has been obliterated by roads and railways. I once knew someone tasked with rediscovering an indigenous trail, with an eye to restoring it. She found the location: right down the median of a divided highway. It turns out that indigenous people didnt like steep hills any more than cars fo.
Even more amazing to me is the unbroken network of copper, fiber, and other data links that let us instantly send information between virtually any two points on the gobe with nothing more than a couple of computers and some electricity.
I feel it's a little different these days with our data. Everything is packetized and we require / have devices along the path so it's no longer literally a single wire from my PC to anywhere else, might hop into different physical mediums along the way even.
If we go back a little to the old POTS and even old alarm systems then I would say that's more true.
There are some exceptions, at least depending on your definition of major city. Juneau, Alaska and its surrounding area aren't connected to the rest of the continental road network, so the only access from outside is by sea or air.
