Long Island, New York and riding on a well-built rain system

If you look at a map, Long Island, New York, seems like it should be saturated by New York City. The Big Apple. Visions of a metropolitan mega-sprawl. Queens is definitely this way, but yesterday we grabbed the train out to Stony Brook. Long Island has an extremely efficient rail system. Out here, in Stony Brook, everything is very well spaced out, and it feels much more like I'm in the countryside, very far from any city. Quite beautiful.