A while back I was driving through New Mexico. We’d haul across 50-60 miles of desert and scub before reaching the next town. What amazed me was that EVERY ONE OF THOSE GODFORSAKEN EXCUSES FOR A TOWN HAD A MCDONALD’S! Got me to wondering, if these wide spots in the road in the middle of nowhere had McD’s, where would yuou have to go in the continental states to get as far away from a McD’s as possible? I’m not as well traveled as many of you, but I’d be surprised if in the lower 48 you could get 100 miles away from a Big Mac. What do you think? Where and how far?
(Digression - recently drove from Chicago to Fla. If we were talking about the SE US, we could rephrase the question “Is it prohibited to construct a highway interchange without an accompanying Waffle House?”)
(Digression #2 - read in a novel yesterday that every day a greater percentage of the US population eats at McD’s than has sex. Probably apocryphal, but I found the image amusing.)
Expanding the question further, does the sun ever set on the McD’s empire?
As for digression #2, It’s been my experience that children and other non or infrequent sex having people (like high-energy physicist, or high school boys) frequent McDonalds. This may skew the statistic. McDonalds lets you know how many people visit, you have to guess on the active sex part. They probably low-balled the average times per week and number of sexually active people.
Here is the McDonalds Store Locator. Big Creek, Idaho is 96 miles from the nearest McDonalds (in Hamilton, MT). The locator includes only includes US locations, so it’s not easy to do an analysis for remote areas along the US-Canada or US-Mexico border. A point in Northwestern Maine is about as far from any US McDonalds as Cold Creek, but probably much closer to some McDonalds in Quebec.
The entirety of Mount Desert Island, in downeast Maine (the second-largest island off the East Coast of the U.S.) is McDonald’s-free. Matter of fact, it’s entirely crappy-fast-food-free.
Grab your last Filet-O-Fish as you turn south on Route 3 from Ellsworth, cause from now on you’ll have to rough it with lobsters and steamed clams.
Humboldt, Kansas has a Pizza Hut and absolutely nothing else that is a franchise, restaurant or otherwise. However, there are a couple of McDonald’s within 15 miles.
We have spent a total of 10 years overseas, living in some fairly exotic or isolated places, Okinawa, Misawa (northern tip of Honshu), and Bad Aibling (waaay southern Bavaria), and we were never more than 30 minutes from a McDonalds.
And when we traveled in Europe and Japan, we almost always were within, at most, an hour of a McDonalds somewhere.
I do not eat very often at a Mac Donalds, but when on the road, they (and the other “crappy fast food joints”) can be a godsend. Clean, clean restrooms, food which is OK, but won’t make you sick*, reasonable prices, fast, etc. True, they are no substitute for real food, but they are very good for travelers. IKE, would you really want a family of six, with 4 tired, hungry kids, invading your local “Lobster Pot”. And if you were that family, would you really want to take off 2 hours to eat, and spend $100? Now, if you DON’T have small kids, and still eat there regularly, even when you are not on the road, then there is something wrong with your tastebuds. AND your diet.
*within walking distance of my home, I can show you a half-dozen good, cheap, fast, clean eateries. I can also show you as many that I wouldn’t eat at with YOUR stomach. How is the stranger to know? You don’t want to take a risk with the bad ones, so you hit the Mac Donalds, or whatever.
Jesus, Dan, pack along a lunch if you’re so nervous about being poisoned at a non-chain restaurant.
My kids and I LIKE hitting the diners and suchlike when we do motor-trips. It’s part of the fun. (If we’re in an area we’re not familiar with, we check the guidebooks for restaurant recommendations.) Some of the meals we’ve had have been mediocre, and some have been damn good (homemade pie!). Beats settling for CONSTANT mediocrity.
And actually, the prices at fast-food joints are often HIGHER than the prices at Sam’s Coffee Pot, Bellows Falls, Vermont.
A friend of mine used to work for Houston Coca-Cola. He says that one of the Coca-Cola Company’s corporate goals was to have their logo in every part of the world. He says that they want every person in the world to have the Coka image somewhere in their 360-degree view. Speaking for the room I’m in right now, I can say that I’m safe from Coke imagery only because my Cokes are in the ice-box. Still, it’s frightening to imagine this goal coming to fruition, but they’re on their way. Notice how much you see the Coke emblem out there in the world.
I happen to know that the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness Area is called one of the most isolated places in the lower 48 (my sister lives near there). I looked on the map and found that Big Creek appears to be closest to the middle of nowhere. I don’t know that’s the place farthest from a McDonalds, but it was the farthest I could find.
The town I grew up in–Beattyville, KY–has no McDonalds to this day. You have to drive about 30 miles to either Jackson or Irvine to get to one. (The one in Irvine has popped up within the last five years.) The surrounding county seats of Stanton, Campton, Booneville, and McKee were also McD-less, the last I knew.
Beattyville is a town of about 1500 people, but that’s misleading–there are about 8000 people in the county, and all of them would tell you they were from Beattyville if you asked. The city limits don’t stretch out very far.
When I moved away in 1994, the only chain store of any kind in Beattyville (unless you count the Shell station or the Dollar General Store) was a Dairy Queen. There is now a gas station with a Burger King-slash-Pizza Hut inside it. The nearest Wal-Mart is still the one in Jackson.
It’s a shame the people around there don’t appreciate the locally-owned businesses. Most of them go to Jackson to Wal-Mart once a week or so for basic necessities. Then again, it’s cheaper for them to do that than to pay the higher prices at home, and this is not an area that is teeming with expendable money.
The Wal Mart nearest me in Baltimore, MD has a McDonald’s inside it. And there’s two more within a mile, one right across the street. I’ve always felt that’s kind of excessive.
Yea, that is kinda frightening (understatement). I saw a Coke briefing-book once that was complaining about the fact that “more water is drunk on Earth than Coca-Cola” and that “more Chinese people drink tea than Coca-Cola”, and suggesting ways to change these things. Oy.
I would say that within two, maybe three minutes tops driving time from my house there are 4 McDonalds, 4 Subways, a KFC, Wendys, Burger King, Rallys, 2 Taco Bells, Blimpies Subs, Pizza Hut, Papa John’s, Dominoes and probobly something else I’m forgetting plus at least one Chineese place and two mom and pop type pizza places. All we need is an Arby’s and we’d be set.
From where I sit here in Bozeman, MT, McDonald’s is walking distance, but I’ve never seen nor heard of KFBH. Then again, Bozeman is a college town so it may be a bit atypical: We also have at least one of every fast-food joint I can think of (except Mr. Hero’s, but I understand that that’s local to the Midwest) within that same walking distance, and two KFC’s and Pizza Huts.