We changed our route through Texas because we were rather tired of the great plains and didn't want to go through flat country for the next 3 days. Texas is a big state, so we had options and chose to go east to San Antonio and then northeast to El Paso. This would put us into the "hills" and then the "Big Bend" area which has mountains, plains, mesas, desert, etc -- quite varied. We started off about 9 am well-provisioned (Thanks, Kathy!) and planned to retrace our steps to I-10 and head west to San Antonio.
In order to understand this story, I need to tell you about Texas freeways and frontage roads. Most freeways here have parallel roads running on both sides called frontage roads. These are two-lane, one-way roads, one on each side of the freeway. They are going in the same direction as the nearest lane on the freeway. It's like an extra two lanes that serve as feeders for entries and exits . I call these "veers" -- "veer on" (to the left from the frontage road onto the freeway) and "veer off" (to the right from the freeway to the frontage road).
The "veers" are very short -- about a 45 degree angle from one road to the other. So you find yourself going along on the freeway and when you see a long line of cars going in your direction on the frontage road, you start wondering when they are going to "veer on" in front of you -- or hope that when you exit ("veer off") they will let you in.
Since frontage roads are one-way, you can find yourself getting off down-wind of your destination. In that case, you just follow the road until the next under or overpass which usually has a stop light. You then go over/under the freeway and start going back on the frontage road on the other side. It is sort of like a merry-go-round -- but you eventually get where you want to go.
So... We retraced our steps back to I-10. The first fly in the ointment was a sign that said to turn right for "I-10 HOV. " We weren't sure if this was just for the HOV lane, so we continued on. (Mistake #1) When we got back to the freeway, there was no entry ramp or sign for I-10, but there was a frontage road. We figured that we knew the drill and turned right onto it. Almost immediately we encountered a "veer on" to the left, so we took it. (Mistake #2)
Almost immediately things seemed wrong. There were no signs for I-10 and all sorts of signs related to a "tollway." Then we came to a "Y" in the road and had to choose either "north" or "south" (we wanted "west"). Panic started to set in as we chose "south" and immediately found ourselves in a toll island area. There were about 6 lanes of freeway and 3 of them were for folks with toll tabs. Knowing that they take pictures of cars without toll tags who go through those lanes and send tickets, we managed to get into the "cash" lanes.
Unfortunately, we did not get into the "gives change" lane. (Mistake #3) So we ended up in the middle lane of a 6-lane freeway during rush hour, faced with a wire-mesh bucket and directions to deposit $1.50. I only had 50 cents in change and Jim threw that into the basket and then tried to stuff a dollar bill into every possible orifice on the machine. No joy. The machine evidently did not accept bills. So we started rummaging through our pockets, my purse, and the glove compartment to find coins. Here we are, in the middle of the freeway, with cars piling up behind us, madly throwing pennies, nickels, anything we could find at this machine. I'm having visions of appearing on the morning traffic report and waving to the hovering helicopter covering the massive traffic jam caused by these clueless Washingtonians.
Jim even threw in his two lucky pennies and lucky dimes -- and miraculously, the gate raised and released us. I'm not sure if we had thrown in enough money, or if the machine had pity on us, or if the lucky coins were responsible, but it didn't matter. We were free!
In no mood to get our money's worth on the tollway, we took the next exit and managed to work our way back to I-10 by following the I-10 HOV signs. So an hour later, we were finally back on I-10 -- and going WEST.
We became concerned about freeway rest stops -- we didn't see any and we saw lots of signs advertising clean restrooms. So we got off the freeway at Columbus and rest stopped at a MacDonald's near the freeway. The MacDonald's happened to have some interesting framed, black-and-white photographs of trees hanging on the walls. Before leaving, I made a tour of them and a man (looked like a rancher) stopped me and asked, "Do you like those pictures?" I said, "yes." Then he told me that if I liked that sort of thing, I should go see the "oldest tree in Texas" which was near by. He gave me directions and I thanked him, went off to tell Jim and we were on the trail.
Well, the trail turned out to be about 20 miles longer than it needed to be. Confusing highway 90 with Alternate-90, we went the wrong way. Finally, we stopped to ask and were directed back in the other direction and into the town of Columbus. We found a tree with a sign, but the sign had nothing to do with the tree. So we asked again and a woman in her car said that she knew where the "hanging tree" was, but not the "oldest" tree. We thought that the "hanging tree" might be more interesting, but we followed her to the Chamber of Commerce on the town square. The Information Center was locked up, so I took some pictures along the town square. I don't know if Texas is a battleground state in the upcoming election, but Columbus Town Square certainly has a battle ground corner.
As I was getting in the can, the visitor center woman came back and she knew where the tree was. It is the "second largest" live oak in Texas. It is 75 feet tall and estimated to be 500 years old. It was across from the post office, next to a white house. We finally found the tree, took a picture and then we got out of town and headed to San Antonio.
Not really looking forward to another freeway experience, we took the widest loop around San Antonio we could find. Even so, we could tell that this was a huge city. It reminded me of Kansas City metro area. I looked at the population and discovered that over 1 million people live here. That is the population of entire states we have been through. So I looked up Houston, and found it has close to 2 million people. They certainly do things BIG in Texas.
Travelling north on I-10 out of San Antonia, the traffic dispersed and we found ourselves in a sparsely populated stretch--50+ miles between towns. The country pretty. Rolling hills covered by small trees. As we continued, the country got noticeably dryer and we saw our first cactus on the trip. We stopped at Junction for the night.
On to El Paso tomorrow.
In order to understand this story, I need to tell you about Texas freeways and frontage roads. Most freeways here have parallel roads running on both sides called frontage roads. These are two-lane, one-way roads, one on each side of the freeway. They are going in the same direction as the nearest lane on the freeway. It's like an extra two lanes that serve as feeders for entries and exits . I call these "veers" -- "veer on" (to the left from the frontage road onto the freeway) and "veer off" (to the right from the freeway to the frontage road).
The "veers" are very short -- about a 45 degree angle from one road to the other. So you find yourself going along on the freeway and when you see a long line of cars going in your direction on the frontage road, you start wondering when they are going to "veer on" in front of you -- or hope that when you exit ("veer off") they will let you in.
Since frontage roads are one-way, you can find yourself getting off down-wind of your destination. In that case, you just follow the road until the next under or overpass which usually has a stop light. You then go over/under the freeway and start going back on the frontage road on the other side. It is sort of like a merry-go-round -- but you eventually get where you want to go.
So... We retraced our steps back to I-10. The first fly in the ointment was a sign that said to turn right for "I-10 HOV. " We weren't sure if this was just for the HOV lane, so we continued on. (Mistake #1) When we got back to the freeway, there was no entry ramp or sign for I-10, but there was a frontage road. We figured that we knew the drill and turned right onto it. Almost immediately we encountered a "veer on" to the left, so we took it. (Mistake #2)
Almost immediately things seemed wrong. There were no signs for I-10 and all sorts of signs related to a "tollway." Then we came to a "Y" in the road and had to choose either "north" or "south" (we wanted "west"). Panic started to set in as we chose "south" and immediately found ourselves in a toll island area. There were about 6 lanes of freeway and 3 of them were for folks with toll tabs. Knowing that they take pictures of cars without toll tags who go through those lanes and send tickets, we managed to get into the "cash" lanes.
Unfortunately, we did not get into the "gives change" lane. (Mistake #3) So we ended up in the middle lane of a 6-lane freeway during rush hour, faced with a wire-mesh bucket and directions to deposit $1.50. I only had 50 cents in change and Jim threw that into the basket and then tried to stuff a dollar bill into every possible orifice on the machine. No joy. The machine evidently did not accept bills. So we started rummaging through our pockets, my purse, and the glove compartment to find coins. Here we are, in the middle of the freeway, with cars piling up behind us, madly throwing pennies, nickels, anything we could find at this machine. I'm having visions of appearing on the morning traffic report and waving to the hovering helicopter covering the massive traffic jam caused by these clueless Washingtonians.
Jim even threw in his two lucky pennies and lucky dimes -- and miraculously, the gate raised and released us. I'm not sure if we had thrown in enough money, or if the machine had pity on us, or if the lucky coins were responsible, but it didn't matter. We were free!
In no mood to get our money's worth on the tollway, we took the next exit and managed to work our way back to I-10 by following the I-10 HOV signs. So an hour later, we were finally back on I-10 -- and going WEST.
We became concerned about freeway rest stops -- we didn't see any and we saw lots of signs advertising clean restrooms. So we got off the freeway at Columbus and rest stopped at a MacDonald's near the freeway. The MacDonald's happened to have some interesting framed, black-and-white photographs of trees hanging on the walls. Before leaving, I made a tour of them and a man (looked like a rancher) stopped me and asked, "Do you like those pictures?" I said, "yes." Then he told me that if I liked that sort of thing, I should go see the "oldest tree in Texas" which was near by. He gave me directions and I thanked him, went off to tell Jim and we were on the trail.
Well, the trail turned out to be about 20 miles longer than it needed to be. Confusing highway 90 with Alternate-90, we went the wrong way. Finally, we stopped to ask and were directed back in the other direction and into the town of Columbus. We found a tree with a sign, but the sign had nothing to do with the tree. So we asked again and a woman in her car said that she knew where the "hanging tree" was, but not the "oldest" tree. We thought that the "hanging tree" might be more interesting, but we followed her to the Chamber of Commerce on the town square. The Information Center was locked up, so I took some pictures along the town square. I don't know if Texas is a battleground state in the upcoming election, but Columbus Town Square certainly has a battle ground corner.
As I was getting in the can, the visitor center woman came back and she knew where the tree was. It is the "second largest" live oak in Texas. It is 75 feet tall and estimated to be 500 years old. It was across from the post office, next to a white house. We finally found the tree, took a picture and then we got out of town and headed to San Antonio.Not really looking forward to another freeway experience, we took the widest loop around San Antonio we could find. Even so, we could tell that this was a huge city. It reminded me of Kansas City metro area. I looked at the population and discovered that over 1 million people live here. That is the population of entire states we have been through. So I looked up Houston, and found it has close to 2 million people. They certainly do things BIG in Texas.
Travelling north on I-10 out of San Antonia, the traffic dispersed and we found ourselves in a sparsely populated stretch--50+ miles between towns. The country pretty. Rolling hills covered by small trees. As we continued, the country got noticeably dryer and we saw our first cactus on the trip. We stopped at Junction for the night.On to El Paso tomorrow.
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