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By age 8 if not before, my cousins and I routinely went more than a 1/2 mi to our local convenience store (WaWa). Ran all over the neighborhood trying to catch the ice cream man.

Never mind the HUGE trips on bikes I would take on the wonderful trail system our “town” has, through woods and onto neighborhood streets (the trails are by far the best thing about Kolumbia, MD). We would go MILES and I LOVED it. (No damn helmets, either.) I had maps of the trail system for venturing out if we wanted to go beyond the usual. If we were late, we knew how to hit the roads so we could get home as fast as possible. Oh my God! We road on the sidewalks! Unless time was really of the essence. then we could get hit by cars on those winding roads!

The horror!

Yep - Genesee Valley Park was about 3 miles from the house when I was 7-8 and we would ride our bikes and then spend the day doing fun things like exploring the RR tracks or climbing up and walking the catwalk under the bridge - had to sidle along a ledge about 12' high (seemed 25' to us) to get to the catwalk.

The Zoo was about 9 miles away and we made a few trips to it too. My folks probably would have also had a fit if they thought I was farther than the 3 miles to the park...

We knew to watch where we were going, mind the traffic, etc., and ended up a bit more independent (not to mention healthy) than today's' squishes.