TEXAS trip
Apr. 30-May 6 2015
PART 5
Heading away from Corpus Christi, I-69 did a Laurel.
TX 285 approaches US 281 in Falfurrias. Though this is a very small town, US 281 is a freeway that runs very close to the center of town, much of it on a berm. Railroad Street serves as US 281 frontage.
As US 281 goes around Alice, this is the ramp to TX 44. The ramp back up to US 281 actually has a railroad crossing.
East on TX 72 approaching a road called FM 99.
As we get closer to FM 99, you'll soon see a gas well flaring off gas.
See all that gas getting wastage bastage.
TX 72 and the water tower at Ray Point.
US 181 in Kenedy had this cool Kermit the Frog billboard - which was automatically cool because it had Kermit the Frog. And Kermit the Frog is a cool person.
US 181 near Falls City. We're only 7 miles from another one of my funny stories, so listen close...
Poth. This is US 181 in Poth. In 5th grade, I was given an educational word search puzzle as part of an assignment. I circled made-up words like poth and rogs. My teacher got annoyed and asked, "What's poth?" I tried to avoid bursting into laughter, but I just couldn't do it, so I really got in trouble! I'm surprised the "board of education" wasn't pressed into service!
I-37 at I-10 in San Antonio, with the downtown skyline in the background. The Space Needle-like structure is the 750-foot-tall Tower of the Americas, which was built for the 1968 World's Fair. Why does Texas like to use 3-digit shields for 2-digit Interstates?
San Antonio is the hometown of singer Christopher Cross, Price Is Right model Holly Hallstrom, and anti-Reagan congressman Henry González. This photo is I-37 again.
I-37 bips past the Tower of the Americas. We're also very close to the Alamo. Every time I think of the Alamo, I think of how the tour guide at the Alamo in Pee-Wee's Big Adventure chewed bubble gum. She didn't bubble. But she was chewin' bubble gum!
The Hays Street Bridge is viz from I-37. The bridge is a pedestrian affair over a rail line.
Another view of San Antonio.
As US 281 forms a freeway running north from downtown San Antonio, this is at the I-410 loop.
San Antonio has another complete loop even further out from I-410! I speak of TX Loop 1604 (the Charles W. Anderson Loop), though not all of it is a freeway. This photo is on US 281 approaching that outer loop. The ramps for the loop are on the humongous bridges in the background. The left side of US 281 here actually overlays San Pedro Avenue. Also, while the loop is a freeway here, a 1969 topo map shows it and US 281 were plain old surface roads that met at-grade.
As US 281 becomes a divided surface road, people exiting onto the road from some side lots must make a U-turn from northbound US 281 to go south. I don't know what we armchair traffic engineers are supposed to call this.
Where US 281 crosses the Guadalupe River, the southbound side uses an apparently older bridge at left.
I can almost guarantee you've never seen anything like this before. US 281 is mostly divided in this area - except at the Spring Branch Post Office. A 2013 article from a San Antonio news source said the post office is the last obstacle to making it a divided highway. That's the building up ahead that blocks the road. We very briefly detour to the left just to avoid this building. But according to the article, demolishing the post office "is inevitable."
US 281 has an exit to US 290 east near Johnson City.
US 281 crosses the Colorado River in Marble Falls.
US 281 in Marble Falls again. The hilarious thing here is the bumper sticker with an outline of Texas that says, "SECEDE."