CoreySamson's Road Trip Reports

[CoreySamson]

Hey y'all! I figured that I would make a catch-all thread for my road trips (and maybe a virtual dump for some of my road photos as well!). Here's the recap from my last trip:

August 2025 Mission/College Trip
This trip, which took place over a period of about a week last week, had three legs.
Leg 1: Brazosport - Tulsa
The first leg of the trip would involve moving back to Tulsa for my senior year of college from my hometown in the Brazosport area in Texas. This part of the trip was mostly straightforward, leaving early to get ahead of Houston rush hour traffic. I ended up taking a few backroads through Spring on the north side of Houston to get around a gnarly crash on I-45.

The rest of the drive was mostly similar to my typical driving route from home to college, with only one huge exception: instead of driving straight through Dallas on I-45/US 75, I bypassed it to the east, mostly using TX 34, TX 205, TX 78, and TX 160, but not before doing some quick clinches in Ennis. I rejoined US 75 just south of Sherman, and took my typical US 75/OK 375 route back to Tulsa from there. Once in Tulsa, I dropped off my college stuff at a storage unit I rented and stayed the night at my pastor's house.

Some observations from this leg:
- Atoka, OK, was completely overrun with trucks. I think there was some minor sidewalk work that closed a lane, but the effects that the closure had were intense. The only places that I can recall seeing a higher concentration of trucks are I-40 in eastern Arkansas and I-45 on the south side of Dallas.
- I feel like there should be a freeway or expressway from Terrell to Farmersville on the east side of Dallas. The area is exploding and could use a little something extra to help with the traffic through Rockwall.
- The construction on US 75 through downtown and south Sherman is complete, but construction on the north side of town and south of it is kicking into high gear.

Legs 2 and 3: Tulsa - Coahuila - Tulsa
The next two legs of the trip used the same roads, so I will count them together. After I stayed the night at my pastor's place, I got up early to get ready for the next part of my trip, which was a church missions trip to Mexico. This trip would mark my first time spending any real time abroad (except for the five minutes or so I was across the Rio Grande at Big Bend National Park several years ago).

I got in my church van with some other people from my church, and we were off. Our route to Mexico was pretty simple: I-44 from Tulsa to Wichita Falls (using I-335 and I-240 to bypass OKC to the south), and US 277 from there to Del Rio, where we crossed the border. After we crossed the border, we took MX-29 down to the town of Zaragoza in Coahuila, where we stayed at a ranch. In Mexico, we gave out backpacks, school supplies, and shoes to about 3000 people, which was pretty awesome. We used the exact same route on the way back to Tulsa.

Observations:
- I liked Mexican signage quite a bit more than I thought I would. The pictographic warning signs made a lot of sense, and the guide signs are helpful. I wish there were more standalone shields and trailblazers, but that's not a dealbreaker.
- I also like Mexican-style passing, as @kphoger has mentioned elsewhere on the forum. Makes a lot of sense to me.
- I found some blue guide signs, which I don't think is typical practice in Mexico, as I have documented in the Unique, Odd, and Interesting signs thread.
- Any talk about I-44 being extended to Abilene along US 277 needs to be squashed. The route is kinda desolate, and much of it is already expressway grade.
- US 277 between Sonora and Del Rio is really pretty.


Overall, I clinched 4 new routes and 8 new counties, as well as 6 county equivalents in Mexico. I also spent considerable time in a foreign nation for the first time, and got a lot of new mileage in Texas and Coahuila, especially on TX 34, US 277, and MX-29. I got so much mileage in Coahuila, in fact, that I am now the leader user on the Travel Mapping website for active+preview systems in that province.

[kphoger]

Our route to Mexico was pretty simple: I-44 from Tulsa to Wichita Falls (using I-335 and I-240 to bypass OKC to the south), and US 277 from there to Del Rio, where we crossed the border. After we crossed the border, we took MX-29 down to the town of Zaragoza in Coahuila, where we stayed at a ranch.

In my experience, the road from Acuña to Zaragoza is just barely getting your toes wet in Mexican driving.  Other than the bouncy bridge abutments, it's basically just a wide open road with half the traffic having Texas plates anyway.  Driving through Acuña lets you know immediately that you're in Mexico, but then the stretch from there to Zaragoza is pretty ho-hum.  But now you've got the taste of it, at least, and I'm sure you'd love wading further into Mexico.

I've always thought Zaragoza looked like a pleasant town.  Very typical looking, not big enough to be noisy or bustling in any way, nice central plaza.  You say you stayed at a ranch there;  the word rancho can either refer to a ranch as we know it or to a small co-op village.  Was your destination an agricultural ranch near Zaragoza, or was it a different small town in the area?

I have some experience donating school supplies in Mexico, but only to either (a) a privately run children's home and (b) the parents' association of a rural small town (rancho) school.  Out of curiosity, who was the immediate recipient of your donations?  Also, I've never had to pay import duties on the supplies we brought in, but I know that's a possibility;  did you have to do anything like that?  Because Mexico is a huge clothing-producing nation, I assume at least the shoes might have been officially disallowed without paying import duty.

province

It ain't Canada, buster. 

[CoreySamson]

I had some random time this afternoon, so I thought I would visit a couple things on my local roadgeek bucket list: seeing some old truss bridges in northern Tulsa county as well as the OK 20 realignment in Claremore.

Bridgehunting
Northern Tulsa county is a treasure trove for old truss bridges. Today I visited 5 of these old bridges, which are all located in the Sperry/Skiatook area. Here they all are:

106th St over Hominy Creek

I actually didn't really expect to find this one (I thought that 106th St had one historic truss bridge, not two!). It had the shortest clearance of all of these trusses. This one is pretty narrow (one lane), and one of the bridge expansion joints makes a really loud sound, so this one was the most "scary".

106th Street over Bird Creek

This one was my favorite of the day. It was apparently built in 1912, and its metal deck was extremely unique. Probably the second bridge I've ever driven over with a metal deck. This one is also one lane wide.

96th Street over Bird Creek

Maybe the least interesting out of the five bridges I saw today, but it was still pretty cool. The most interesting thing about this one was that tons of vines were growing in and around the metal beams of the bridge:

Other than that, the bridge is in really great shape.

Old 131st St over Bird Creek

This one is closed to traffic, only accessible by walking. This one is heavily obscured by foliage at the entrance, which you can see in the photo. Makes it seem pretty magical when you walk onto it. This one was also impressively tall.

Old OK 11 bridge over Hominy Creek

This was interesting. The old OK 11 bridge over Hominy Creek was rebuilt several years ago, but instead of destroying the old truss, they hauled it almost 3 miles to the north and put the yellow truss structure over a ditch on private property next to the road, as you can see in this GSV:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/CwgmTeoPq2jXYwyb7

The website Oklahoma Bridges is a great comprehensive bridgehunting resource that helped me find these bridges, so I want to give some credit there. There are lots of great photos on the site!

Claremore OK 20 Realignment
After I explored these bridges, I went over to Claremore to investigate the newly-opened first section of the OK 20 Claremore bypass and new interchange with I-44. OK 20 now temporarily dips to the south of Claremore, bridges over OK 66, and loops back on itself to form a concurrency with OK 66, which it takes to downtown Claremore. The new bypass is 2 lanes each direction, separated by a turning lane. Here is a picture of the concurrency, looking west here:


And a picture looking northwest from here:


OK 20 was also realigned near the Verdigris River recently as well, which has an absolutely stunning rock cut, which you can see on GSV:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/AjQsQmtZP7xRaxYv9

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Overall, it was a pretty fun day. In addition to seeing all these things, I also clinched OK 266, and got some decent mileage on OK 11 and OK 20.

[pderocco]

Where I grew up in Massachusetts, grates are common on bridges, because snow can fall through the openings, or be pushed through by tires. We probably had more snow than you do in OK.