Whisky 1: How far?
A few years back, your humble correspondent was staying in Independence Virginia. Imagine my surprise when I couldn’t buy a bottle of whisky in the towns supermarket & had to make a 50 mile round trip to do so ! Similarly...
Stephen Von Worley has plotted the position of every McDonald's in the United States. All 13,000 odd of them. While it turns out that those Golden Arches can be seen from most street corners on the East Coast, French Fries fans in the West often have to go the distance. Still, it's not quite Little House on the Prairie levels of pioneering.
For maximum McSparseness, we look westward, towards the deepest, darkest holes in our map: the barren deserts of central Nevada, the arid hills of southeastern Oregon, the rugged wilderness of Idaho’s Salmon River Mountains, and the conspicuous well of blackness on the high plains of northwestern South Dakota. There, in a patch of rolling grassland, loosely hemmed in by Bismarck, Dickinson, Pierre, and the greater Rapid City-Spearfish-Sturgis metropolitan area, we find our answer. Between the tiny Dakotan hamlets of Meadow and Glad Valley lies the McFarthest Spot: 107 miles distant from the nearest McDonald’s, as the crow flies, and 145 miles by car!
Comments
McDonalds Lovelock Nevada is always a welcome stop on a cross desert journey.
Posted by: thud | October 2, 2009 12:51 AM
Umm? Colour me unimpressed - this is simply a map of population density. I wonder why that would be...
Posted by: Cleanthes | October 2, 2009 9:17 AM
When traveling long distances through the American West, the sight of those Golden Arches is a welcome sight indeed. Especially when you have two young kids in the back. It means the odds of finding your little tax deductions something to eat they won't fuss over, and a clean bathroom just went up.
Posted by: Larry Anderson | October 2, 2009 2:19 PM
Cleanthes shares my opinion.
It's a cute map, but it is indistinguishable from any other map representing any measure of population density: traffic lights, post offices, veterinary clinics, etc.
If I eat an Egg McMuffin in Meadow at 8am and drive at the speed limit, they'll still be serving breakfast at the McDonald's in Glad Valley at 10am. I'd have to wait another hour and a half for a Big Mac.
According to this data, the maximum distance from a stationary, inhabited spot to any McDonalds is half that distance: 72.5 miles. If one gets a Big Mac Attack, you could get there in under an hour. That's far less time than it took for Harold and Kumar to satisfy their craving for White Castle.
Posted by: POWinCA | October 4, 2009 4:47 AM
Interestingly enough, a similar map of gun shops would reveal precisely the opposite geography...
Posted by: Kim du Toit | October 4, 2009 7:46 PM
Kim wins this round.
However....
We can ponder also that this map is accurate for any measure of crime, drugs, etc etc
Posted by: Cleanthes | October 5, 2009 9:37 AM
Are you THAT deeply concerned that people will use their free will.
Posted by: Joe | October 5, 2009 9:18 PM
McDonald's milkshakes are superb. Unless you have driven the trackless wastes of Northern Nevada, southern Wyoming and Northern AZ, you will have no idea how welcome those Golden Arches look.
We used to say that the scenery in Wyoming improved either at night or when it snowed.
Posted by: Cricket | October 6, 2009 1:53 PM
That particular 'black spot' where there are no McDonald's is the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation, surrounded by acres and acres of ranching and farm land.
http://www.standingrock.org/
Posted by: Squirrel | December 20, 2009 4:37 PM