Until nature doubled down on the restricted visibility and made the Blue Ridge mountains. It’s about the only thing that comes close in terms of spectacular.

But otherwise you’re absolutely right. I think growing up in KY is part of why things like the Grand Canyon or the ocean didn't register as mind blowing as they really are. I could never see a 10 mile distance, and even if I could, anything as clear as the GC was would’ve been much closer. It wasn’t till I did an internship in NM that it really sank in. Going east on 40 from Albuquerque, theres a point near Sedillo where you exit the Sandias and can see the road stretched out in front of you till the next hill. I guessed it was about a mile and a half away, but it was actually four and a quarter.

> Maybe if Amazon wasn't so full of garbage.

Any more it feels like Amazon is just a reskin of AliExpress

I saw a similar sort of thermal energy storage system that was basically a massive brick of wax in an insulated box. The idea being that as energy is put into the brick, it is stored by melting some wax, and pulling energy causes it to freeze. In physics terms, using the latent heat of a material to store energy rather than its raw temperature.

The box I saw was more designed to be used as a source/sink for a local heat pump than as grid scale storage, but it may be possible to scale it up.