I mean... you stop when you need gas. If you're lucky you don't need gas very often. I did LA to Albuquerque a few times. You stop for lunch in Flagstaff, at which point you're eight hours in and six hours to go.

Lessee - five stops between Seattle and Eugene would be Tacoma, Olympia, Portland... nah that's it. With double the area and three quarters the population, there's just a lot more nothing in the USA.

I would love high speed rail. Shit, I'd love functional rail. And maybe this is just grown-up-in-the-desert me, but the threshold for flying is a thousand miles, not 0-400. It's not a european situation at all - I did some work out at WSU and it was six of one, half a dozen of the other. You could go to the airport, wait an hour, get on a plane, fly an hour, get off the plane, get a rental car, drive an hour and be in Pullman... or you could start driving and be there in four hours. That's 285 miles.

There will never be high speed rail to Pullman. So there's a 10-hour, $90 train ride. There's also a 23-hour bus ride. Or, you get in the car.