This honestly does help

I knew it. Florida is (mostly) in Mordor! That makes so much sense!
- Flordor

They had to go all the way to Florida 😔
- Worse, Jacksonville.

Can't help but wanna see this overlaid on a mall map: these hobbits had to get to JC Penny from the Books-A-Million. A harrowing journey of many months.

So Bilbo took I-88 but got to the border of New York, said nah I'm good, then went back the way he came.
Frodo & Sam took a wrong turn at the Indiana border and then got lost until they wound up in Florida.
- And took an Eagle plane back to Elvish palace

Are you telling me california is the undying lands?
- And the Shire is in Manhattan, Kansas.
- That's damn near where the name comes from.

$On the eagles$
Sam's club: we're not in Kansas anymore
- The Philadelphia Eagles are coming!
  
  Says something that frodo and Sam travel to the bowels of mordor, but they draw the line at Mississippi

if they really had to go to Florida they would've jumped in after tossing the ring

Wait, I'm dumb, what's the blue line?
- The one that says "Bilbo"?
  
  After checking a few more times I see the blue text “Bilbo” under the blue line, just right from the red one.
  I need to sleep, but thank you internet stranger.

They went to Mordor-lago?
- Flori-dor?
  
  I didn't notice the outline of North America until reading this. I thought it was just weird splotches.

They were smart to avoid Atlanta, the traffic there is horrible.
Also, the whole mines of Moria part makes sense, being Kentucky and all.
- Ya but they had to go through Chattanooga, which is way more infuriating.
- They were smart to avoid Atlanta, the traffic there is horrible.

They’re taking the hobbits to Jackson-gard!
- Jackson!

Mordor being in Florida checks out.
- Yup. Just outside of Jacksonville. I knew it.

After reading the books, I felt like the movies were rushed (yes, even the extended editions). You just didn't get a sense for how long and arduous their journey was. It took Sam and Frodo a month just to get to Rivendell alone, and you truly felt like you were out hiking and camping with the hobbits for all that time.
In the movies, they just bump into friends and allies, spend a night at Bree (plus a couple nights out camping in the wild), run from the Nazgul, then they're magically there at Rivendell. Doesn't seem like it took more than a few days tops.
The whole journey to Mordor and back took a whole year. Imagine spending a whole year walking and camping across America and you might get a sense for how long it took them.
Honestly, The Lord of the Rings should've been a miniseries to properly flesh out the long journey. Even the extended editions cut lots of story and rushed the pacing to keep the story moving forward.
- Honestly, The Lord of the Rings should've been a miniseries to properly flesh out the long journey
  Depending on how well the Harry Potter show goes, I won't be surprised at all if we see this eventually
- That or just some other more effective narrative exposition to give the viewer a better sense of time.
  
  Narration is boring. Montages have the potential to overstay their welcome. Exposition in dialogue is dumb. There's already so much going on in the movies that adding more set pieces would actually generate the opposite effect. Busy movies feel like they rush and a lot happens in a short span of time (think what if tom bombadil). The only way was to actually cut more stuff to focus even more narrowly on fewer plot points, to gain time where to insert set pieces that illustrated the time passing, with slower pace. When a movie has very few things going on in a long time span, it feels like it's illustrating a very long span of time. This is a balancing act that all screenwriters and directors have to face. For example, look at interstellar vs. Castaway, which one objectively is about a longer period time, which one actually leaves you feeling like the characters experienced a lot of time?
- One way Tolkien adds tension and time is to end with a cliffhanger for Sam and Frodo in book 4 (part 2 of Two Towers) you then start following Merry and Pippin in book 5 (part 1 of Return Of The King) and have to read all of that before returning to Frodo and Sam in book 6.
  Reference: A bit about the 6 books https://screenrant.com/lord-of-the-rings-tolkien-6-books-why/
  
  The other R. R. tried that too, except he still hasn't finished the book where the cliffhanger should resolve.
  
  Yes! The Two Towers novel ended with Frodo supposedly dead from Shelob, and Sam picking up the ring to finish the journey. It was almost halfway into Return of the King that we find out Frodo is still alive and Sam needs to rescue him!
  That was such a great plot twist. I was kind of sad they didn't follow that chain of events in the movies. The whole Shelob thing was resolved really quickly, about halfway into Return of the King.
- The Hobbit cartoon does a great job of that with some montage scenes that go on for a while.

When you think about it, they basically walked twice as far as that since they’re so small.
- they walked 500 miles and 500 more

Still better than staying in Ohio.

This is dumb they def coulda gotten a flight
- Credit to https://www.oglaf.com/ornithology/
  
  Wait, who got eaten? Who are on the other eagle?

ok, but then... how come at the end of the first movie can they see Mt doom in the distance. does sight work differently in this age?
i cant see the smokies from Florida.
//UNWATCHABLE
/s
- As an answer to your not-a-question, I think it would imply that Arda is an absolutely massive planet, such that your sight line would be further.
  
  Is there any evidence the Lord of the Rings world is round? The world was canonically created with magic, so it doesn't need to follow our version of physics
  
  I wonder if you could calculate that. I thought that on a level area, the horizon is about 6 miles out (or is it 12?) based on that, could you calculate the size of the world based on the height of mount doom and the distance it would be?

I like how they noped out of Florida and back into Georgia.
- I like how the Dead Marshes line up pretty much perfectly with the Okefenokee Swamp.

Oh damn. I did that in 3rd grade over summer vacation! Cool.
I had a minivan tho
- I like the idea of the full fellowship just chilling in a minivan playing road trip games.
  
  Gandalf road raging in the left lane doin 5 under screaming "YOU SHALL NOT PASS"
  Legolas calls padiddle before anyone else has a chance
  The hobbits all fell into that little crack between the seat and the seatbelt latch thing, but they were ok because of the crumbs of lamb ass bread (that's what I call it cause it's shite) that they found.
  And everybody screamed and scared the shit out of Gimli, who had fallen asleep and instantly charged into battle with the headrest of the front seat when startled awake. Then he got all embarrassed.
- The fellowship really cheaped out on travel, huh?
  
  Well, to be fair, the fellowship was working as a low-wage Ent at the time, and I was a mere hobbit on a shoulder, so I just went along for the ride while he reminisced about his dead dogs.
  
  Blame the unreliable eagles.
  You might even call them flighty.