Louisiana meet--March 17 & 18, 2018

[cjk374]

A big THANK YOU to all who attended this meet yesterday!! I hope everyone had as much fun as I did. We had our interesting moments...a horse at I-220/I-49, Vivian, LA's Redbud Festival traffic jam from hell just to name a couple. Pictures will be posted in this thread soon.

Just to give an early heads up...I am already thinking about doing another LA road meet. This time it will be in central LA (affectionately known in these parts as "cenla"), say maybe in March 2020?

[signalman]

I had a good time and it was great meeting everyone.  Thanks for hosting, Jess.  I'm getting ready to depart Bossier City after a good night's sleep and big breakfast.  I'm looking forward to seeing the pictures since I forgot to pack my camera like a dumbass. 

[cjk374]

https://flic.kr/s/aHsmewK1rT

Photos from the meet. Enjoy.

[oscar]

Here are my two group photos.

The first one is at the TX-AR-LA tripoint marker. We grouped together on the left the people wearing their favorite route markers.



From left to right: Oscar (wearing the AK 11 route marker), A.J. (M-22), David (US 71), Jess (meet host), Sam, Jason, Brian, Josh, Patrick, Bill, Scott, Brandon.

The other is at the nearby border marker on the TX-LA boundary.



I think Josh came from the most distant place. I hope he and the others from the Northeast don't have much trouble with the snow headed our way (in my area, up to 3").

[signalman]

Bill is my name.  For editing and future reference

[Brandon]

Yes, absolutely thank you, Jess.  I'm looking forward to the Alexandria meet.

[jpi]

Same here, Steph and I had a nice time and got home last night fine, thanks for hosting!

[A.J. Bertin]

Sam and I made it home safely to West Michigan this afternoon. Thank you so much, Jess, for hosting this meet! I had a great time and will absolutely consider Alexandria in 2020 if you end up hosting that.

[cl94]

As of half an hour ago, I finally completed the 2,000+ mile drive home to Albany. EXCELLENT meet and I'm looking forward to a future Alexandria meet as well (though I won't be so ambitious with my route).

[TheHighwayMan3561]

I'm still out on the road for another couple days. In Nashville tonight but will make significant progress toward home tomorrow. I do have plans in southern Wisconsin Thursday into Friday.

[US71]

I was going to spend a couple days around Alexandria and Baton Rouge, but the weather looked dicey so I opted for Ruston to Pine Bluff.  I clinched US 63 in Arkansas (and Louisiana), but north of El Dorado it seemed rather bland. I hit PB just before sunset and ran into some storms so opted to stop for the night.

I liked the signs on  US 167 north of Ruston: Keep Right Except To Pass Or Turn. I wondered for a moment if that meant I had to make all my turns from the Left Lane. 

[SSOWorld]

And that's a wrap.

Made it home today after an overnight sightseeing and driving around DFW before finishing off the Interstates of Arkansas and Missouri (nothing like being in KC and STL on the same day - no not at the same time), not to mention the tri-point by OK20/AR43/MO43 which I saw much missing signage for (likely not looking in the other locations) but did see the pair by the monument.  I aborted the last day's scenic route due to the car's oil life running out and drove the fast route home. 

Thanks Jess for hosting a good meet. 

[oscar]

I'm not quite home -- couldn't make it back before the snowstorm, so I'm spending a second night in Morgantown WV, which got less snow but the hills in town are ridiculous.

More to follow once I'm back home, hopefully tomorrow afternoon.

[signalman]

I'm still on the road. I had booked a room in Richmond, which I just checked in to. Northern NJ is getting clobbered with snow.. I'm contemplating riding the storm out for a second night here. It's currently snowing in Richmond, but it's not sticking to the roads.

[Alps]

I'm still on the road. I had booked a room in Richmond, which I just checked in to. Northern NJ is getting clobbered with snow.. I'm contemplating riding the storm out for a second night here. It's currently snowing in Richmond, but it's not sticking to the roads.

It's not that bad up here. Plows are keeping pace.

[cl94]

I'm still on the road. I had booked a room in Richmond, which I just checked in to. Northern NJ is getting clobbered with snow.. I'm contemplating riding the storm out for a second night here. It's currently snowing in Richmond, but it's not sticking to the roads.

It's not that bad up here. Plows are keeping pace.

North Jersey isn't the problem. South Jersey, "Central Jersey" (if you believe such a thing exists), eastern PA are getting slammed.

[signalman]

I'm still on the road. I had booked a room in Richmond, which I just checked in to. Northern NJ is getting clobbered with snow.. I'm contemplating riding the storm out for a second night here. It's currently snowing in Richmond, but it's not sticking to the roads.

It's not that bad up here. Plows are keeping pace.

North Jersey isn't the problem. South Jersey, "Central Jersey" (if you believe such a thing exists), eastern PA are getting slammed.

I'm not worried about NJ, it's VA, MD and PA that I'm concerned about and I need to pass through those states in order to get home.  Sorry, I poorly worded my previous post.

[oscar]

I got back home this afternoon, as the snow was melting in the D.C. area after temps rose into the 40s.

It was a good meet, both reasonable length and also something for everybody (I-49 construction, historic bridges, and the LA-AR-TX tripoint).

Part of what took me to Shreveport was combining that with lots of route-clinching along the way. On the way out, I clinched the North Carolina Interstates I hadn't previously driven (but one more, a new segment of I-840 in Greensboro, is coming soon). I also spent a lot of time in Texas before the meet, including a clinch of the short and obscure US 175, the short I-169 near Harlingen (looks like construction is in progress that might extend it a few more miles), and the Texas parts of US 87, US 287, and US 385. With this trip, I've clinched those three routes south of I-80, and I might snag the remainder on a northern road trip this summer. On the way back, I finished off US 79, the newest I-269 segment south of Memphis, and the newly-completed bypass in North Vernon IN onto which US 50 will likely be rerouted.

I have a second "round 2" account on mob-rule.com, which will ultimately show all the counties I've re-visited since I completed the U.S. counties in 2010 and Canada's in 2016. The U.S. map so far only includes my travels to and from the Shreveport meet, which illustrates how I got there and back including my travels all over Texas in the week preceding the meet:

http://www.mob-rule.com/user-gifs/USA/oscar-rd2.gif

That map, which like Canada's is organized differently than my "round 1" map, highlights the county seat cities I drove through (often driving past the courthouse). I didn't give much priority to county seats in round 1, but am paying more attention in round 2. The U.S. route network reaches more county seats than the Interstates, and often is less boring (in west Texas, both are mind-numbingly boring, but at least both have generous speed limits), though I did some Interstate travel on this trip to keep the overall length to about two weeks.

[hbelkins]

US 79 has been re-extended back to US 68 on the east side of Russellville, correct?

[oscar]

US 79 has been re-extended back to US 68 on the east side of Russellville, correct?

Yes, over the new southern Russellville bypass (part of which is also US 431).