I'm not sure we disagree. You use the gravel rural roads to get to the nearest paved road. So rarely are you going more than a few miles on gravel, then you hit a paved road which you travel for the many miles to where you are going. Most of the roads are still unpaved, but you spend most of your driving time on the paved roads.

Errr, not in the rural area I grew up in. Gravel driveways are super common, gravel roads not so much.

To give some specifics: I only remember driving down an actual gravel road (like, for public use) a single time. In 18 years. Even my friends who lived >30min from the nearest "city" (~10k population) had paved roads all the way.

But that is just my own experience. Areas with a different climate or geography might be a totally different story. My hometown area is relatively flat, lots of farmland, and rarely gets severe winter weather.

Oh yes, my mistake, I was inferring the wrong conclusion from your first comment.

> Most of the roads are still unpaved, but you spend most of your driving time on the paved roads.

Yeah I definitely agree with that. I imagine if you were to look at my county's roads from a satellite, it'd be something like the (grid-shaped) veins of a leaf — the thick, prominent veins are the paved roads, providing the structure, while the thinner, branching veins are the gravel roads that run between them.