The AARoads Blog

Here are photos from Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, and Nebraska. I woke up in Wyoming after being awake for 80+ hours, experiencing near-total biological failure and thus getting a lease on a $26 motel room and my continued sanity.

I headed south to visit my friend Brian, then was about to turn back west to take photos of the Rockies… before noting that a Snowstorm of Usual Occurrence was blowing through and it would be at least two days before the roads were somewhat less than total failure. Thus, it became a frolic through the farmlands for a few days.

A wintry evening in Colorado.

Foggy night in farmland Kansas.

Hey look, an old sign. I happened upon this one in the middle of the night, and got the long-exposure shot out in the middle of the frosted fields.

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back to US-10, back to Montana. We head out in the night eastbound, just to touch North Dakota, and then as the sun rises, to scour all the old alignments and see what there is to see – mainly, old I-94 signs. Then we head south on US-87 into Wyoming and search for old I-90 signs.

Old US-10 bridge at dawn. Glendive, Montana. The bridge dates back to 1922 and is no longer in service.

Now here are some old signs! Painted directly onto the side of a bridge – go ahead and try to steal them! They’re in Miles City. Some of the oldest highway shields in existence. The bottom one is ROUTE/22/MONTANA, which is Montana highway 59′s old number.

And here’s the very last of Montana at the end of the day.

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more photos from my trip across the Rocky Mountains several times – in the dead of winter, of course!

old US-91 in Idaho. Between the full moon and the snow, it was bright enough to drive without headlights!

Interstate Ninety. Appropriately, I’m doing ninety. The storm behind on top of me, threatening wind and rain and snow, is doing ninety as well. This oughta be fun, especially since I am obligated to stop at every exit to look for old signs…

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these photos go very far back – to a trip I took in December, 2007 … crossing the Rocky Mountains and the Continental Divide several times, including a dead-of-night blizzard trip across the treacherous Million Dollar Highway in western Colorado!

here is the first day of that trip – the Bay Area to Arco, Idaho.

The Sierras, in southeast Oregon. Just about the northernmost extent of this mountain range.

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The second day of our Baja trip. We leave San Felipe and head back to the United States, making stops in San Luis Rio Colorado, and Tecate.

Highway 5, between the 3 turnoff and the desert just south of Mexicali, features this spectacular red-rock canyon.

North of that canyon is another one, in the middle of a salt flat. The entire view is very similar to Death Valley.

The fault. Mike stands astride an old alignment of highway 2 that was torn in half by the April, 2010 Mexicali earthquake.

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A trip that Mike Ballard and I took down to San Felipe, Baja California, in July, 2010. We drove federal route 1 from Tijuana to Ensenada, then 3 to 5 to San Felipe and Puertecitos, before returning the next day along 5 to some Baja California state routes and into Sonora to San Luis Rio Colorado. We then drove 2 all the way back to Tecate, stopping along the way to view the fault line that moved during the April, 2010 Mexicali earthquake.

World-famous Oh Shit Dip on highway 5 between San Felipe and Puertecitos. There are many that are much worse, further south along this road. However, that road was washed out by Hurricane Nora in 1997. The road was in terrible shape until – well, so recently that most US tour books and websites still do not know that it has been resurfaced.

The road is paved, and in great condition, past Puertecitos all the way down to El Huerfanito. It does help to remember, however, that any dip that has the orange and black striped marker beside it (like the Oh Shit Dip here) is best slowed down for.

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not featuring any photos from Union County – this was the return trip of over 1200 miles, in time to even show up to work in mid-afternoon!

We are on an old US-70 alignment, and here is the obligatory photo of the curves warning sign with the treacherous mountains in the background.

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