Well Travelled?

I was thinking today about how a lot of people from Europe and other countries tend to think of Americans as poorly travelled, and haven't seen much of the world. So I got to doing some number crunching, as I tend to like to do (thanks, Dad), and came to an interesting conclusion.

The U.S., since us Americans are being compared to countries that use that godawful metric system, is just over 9.7 million sq. kilometers. I've been to every state in the U.S. except Alaska.
The continent of Europe is approximately the same size. Australia is a little smaller.

That means, for any Aussie or European that wants to call me, or any other American like me, poorly travelled, or more closely, less well travelled than they, they would have had to have traversed the entirety of their own continent and then some.

Japan is 377,835 sq. km. California is 410,000 sq. km. I've driven I-5 from Canada to Tijuana, in pieces, on numerous occasions. Starting to get the picture here?
The average American puts 13,000 miles on their car each year. That's enough mileage to drive from New York to Paris 3.5 times, from New York to Tokyo twice.

If an American visits 10 states in his or her life, they've covered more distance than most Europeans that have been to 6 or 7 other countries. The only difference is the American hasn't left the country.

In my life, I've been to 49/50 states, England, (at the time West) Germany, Italy, and Japan. All countries, for the record, that fought against the U.S. in one war or another. By the time I move home I plan to have visited Australia, Thailand, Korea, Vietnam, Micronesia and Indonesia. Maybe even Russia and China. I've been to 3 of 7 continents.

Please, don't go around thinking Americans aren't well travelled. We've got a whole lot of country to see right at home.