I'm nearest to Houston; the city itself is about 672 square miles (bigger than NYC in area), while the "metropolitan area" (city, surrounding suburbs not within the "city" limits) is about 10,062 square miles. Based on population density and constant roadwork, it can easily take 2 hours to drive from one extreme to the other. I'm near the northern extreme and regularly drive about 45 minutes to get to places I frequent.
The smallest US State (by area) is Rhode Island, at 1,545 sqmi, which fits well within the area of the Houston MA, and is about 1.5X the area of your not-too-distant neighbor (well, once you go through Belgium), Luxembourg.