"Can't you just take a boat?"

People are stupid. To be more specific, Americans tend to be pretty stupid. To be even more specific, Americans are very stupid in the category of geography. I was talking to an ADULT who is a friend of my family. We were making very brief small talk, and she asked me about what I was going to do this summer. I told her I might go to Alaska for the first time because I have some extended family out there, and Alaska is a really cool place. 

"Ohh wow that sounds cool how are you going to get there?" she said, obviously with fake enthusiasm.

"Well, I'll probably end up driving there. Through Canada. It'll be kind of a hassle getting a passport and the trip itself will be boring. I'll have to drive for like... six days through the woods."

"You know what you should do?" she literally flipped her hair and popped her gum. This woman is a walking stereotype. "You should take a boat from California to Alaska."

"Well, I've never thought of that. I guess that could be cool, like a cruise ship for a couple days and then go to Alaska."

"No no no, it wouldn't take a couple days. You could just take a ferry or something and get there in a couple hours." 

I was really confused. At this point I just had no idea what she meant.

"I think taking a boat from California isn't that much faster than driving through Canada..."

"Well haven't you seen on maps how Alaska and California are like... right next to each other? I've always wondered... Hawaii and California are hot, but Alaska is south of  them and its cold there? How does that work? Is is something like global warming or global cooling?"

At this point I just stared at her.

For a while. This woman is in her mid thirties, and has a license to sell real-estate, but for some reason thinks that the states of Alaska, California and Hawaii are right next to each other. Then I remembered how she might think this. 

On maps of the United States, Alaska and Hawaii are put where Mexico is because they are both very far away and can't be shown in relation to the rest of the map without a lot of awkward extra space. Everyone knows this. Or so I thought. But this woman seriously thought that I could go to California and take a boat across that small space by Alaska on the map. Seriously, this is why other countries laugh at us. Because lots of people are terrible at geography.