NEW MEXICO trip
Oct. 12-19 2023
PART 1
By 2023, New Mexico had rejoined the free world (as if anyone cared in 2021). My 2023 trip focused primarily on the annular solar eclipse.
I-65 near Munfordville, Ky. (where customers of a Druther's during my 1988 Nashville trip got gum from the gumball machine instead of eating Druther's food). The H on that truck looks like the Holiday Inn logo!
Something funny here. Not laugh-so-hard-you'll-pee-your-pants funny but weird funny. Not only has most of the William H. Natcher Parkway been made into a new Interstate - I-165 - but a small stub of the parkway now carries a KY 9007 marker. The 9000s were previously all secret numbers for the parkways.
This city was famously praised as "fivish" in a high school book report I wrote: Nashville! Here we're mired in a traffic jam on I-65.
I'm old enough to remember when Birmingham was the control city instead of Huntsville, Ala. For its part, Huntsville has annexed enough land that it now grazes I-65.
This is I-40. I-269 - an outer loop around Memphis - was only established in 2015 and completed in 2018.
I-40 slogs into Memphis.
A view of Memphis, home of many music legends including Elvis Presley, B.B. King, Isaac Hayes, and the Box Tops. I had a record of "The Letter" growing up, and I thought the name of the band meant the record came from sending in cereal box tops.
As we reexamine our now-familiar southwestern route, this is looking up the Mississippi River as we cross I-40's Hernando de Soto Bridge into Arkansas. The state line doesn't follow the river perfectly here, because of the formation of oxbow lakes.
As we leave I-40 near Little Rock, it's strange to see St. Louis as a control city. That's really for US 67, which is a freeway for miles to the northeast. Plans call for extending I-57 southwest along US 67 to near Little Rock.
A view of Little Rock from I-440.
I-30 had this big tie-up. The billboard said "MIGHTY DOG." Remember the Mighty Dog commercials with the branding iron? Those predated the Lee jeans commersh where the kid branded random people's butts.
AR 32 in Hope. Bill Clinton's hometown was the home of many filthy restrooms and ruined gas stations, like that which plagued this exit.
US 278 in Hope. We had to go all the way to this exit to find a gas station where the pumps worked. But the lav was just as dirty, as it had a nice, big wisp on the floor.
I-30 frontage in Mount Pleasant, Texas - where a big group left Applebee's without paying.
This billboard along I-30 said "I MAKE SEXY TEETH." You might expect it to feature an attractive model with sexy, crooked teeth, but instead it has a nerdy dentist with a bowtie.
This area was a mainstay of my Texas trips of the 2010s, and this is another look at I-30 at Ray Hubbard Lake as we near Dallas.
Another look at this junction I'm sure I covered before. The humiliatingly named President George Bush Turnpike is a toll freeway forming an outer loop around much of Dallas.
I-30 approaching Dallas gets the high-tech treatment that we could only dream of in the days of Speak & Spell and Major Morgan.
I-30 has this predicament at I-635.
Downtown Dallas looms 6 miles ahead.
Another photo of the city that was one of my 2010s standbys.
Looking out over east central Dallas.
Any view of downtown Dallas is reminiscent of the opening theme of the 1980s primetime drama Dallas. You expect to see J.R. Ewing with a conniving grin on his face. It also reminds me of how a couple posted a video on YouTube where they unwrapped a pack of Dallas trading cards and tried to chew the 40-year-old gum.
This is the tangle at I-45. Nothing in this 13-part photo shoot so far is really uncharted. But don't worry. Soon we will smell some new territory looming.