Texas is almost as long as California but quite a bit more thicc.
One additional factor, though, is that California’s major cities are mainly spread all along its lengthy coastline, while most of Texas’s major cities (Fort Worth, San Antonio, Houston, Austin, Dallas, etc) are clustered in the interior, decently far but not that far from one another. So going between Austin/Houston/Dallas is not necessarily as daunting a trip as going from Los Angeles to San Francisco.
Texas is almost as long as California but quite a bit more thicc.
One additional factor, though, is that California’s major cities are mainly spread all along its lengthy coastline, while most of Texas’s major cities (Fort Worth, San Antonio, Houston, Austin, Dallas, etc) are clustered in the interior, decently far but not that far from one another. So going between Austin/Houston/Dallas is not necessarily as daunting a trip as going from Los Angeles to San Francisco.
San Antonio -> Austin -> Dallas is ~5h (and they’re basically in a straight line)
LA to SF is ~6h
Add Houston on the end and it’s 8h+ (roughly a C shaped route) or roughly San Diego to SF.
Interesting the distance between the furthest points in each state is roughly 14 hours for both. They’re weirdly analogous.