Indeed. Just Washington (the state) takes about 8 hours to drive across from end to end...(from the ocean to the border with Idaho) if you're lucky and catch things just right. Otherwise it can take 10 hours or so. The whole of the US would take several days.
We're basically like tons of countries...but all behaving as one.
Personally I often wonder if we wouldn't be smarter if we didn't divide into smaller groups sometimes...but that thought is almost like blasphemy here.
Even tech things are really different here and how pricing is handled, and etc. We're a really strange country, and I can fully admit it.
If you ever did make it over this way and wanted to see some cool tech places like Nintendo, Valve, Microsoft, etc I'd be more than willing to show you around.