You're Never Too Far From a Big Mac

Growing up in a town of about 20,000, it was big deal when the second McDonald's in town opened up. Yes, no longer would you have to drive upwards of 10 minutes across town to get your flavorless-meat-product burger©. Nope, now we were a real town, with the ability to drive past one McDonald's and say "No, that one's no good; let's go to the other McDonald's."

And truly that did make it a real city, because if there's anything that defines a real American city, it is the ubiquity of McDonald's. The map below shows the saturation of McDonald's throughout the nation. Only the desserts and mountains out West can even begin to interrupt the blanket coverage.

Oh, and incase you're curious, the furthest you can possibly be from a McDonald's is 107 miles in the no man's land of the Dakotas. 107 miles. That's it. Meaning if you wanted to, you would have to put a great deal of effort into getting triple-digit miles away from a McDonald's.

At the risk of sounding too radical, I might argue this has a bit to do with our nation's obesity epidemic, but I don't want to pick on a morally-upstanding corporate citizen like McD's...