Day 7: Reaching the halfway point after nearly 3,000 miles on the car (and more of the same on the return trip). Was it Jake who had to get the oil changed in his rental? Yesterday's trip ended with windmills on Old 66, today's began with windmills on OK 37. I like windmills. This made me happy. I was unhappy upon leaving Atoka, though, where the devastation from the Tushka tornado that killed 2 the night before (6 deaths reported across the state from all the storms, 17 total from the next day's continuation in MS and AL) was still raw across a narrow swath of OK 3. This really pointed up the power of a tornado - complete wreckage strewn everywhere for a couple hundred feet, everything else intact on either side. A few houses are gone, all the possessions scattered, and who knows if the people are alive? I was heartened to see dozens of cars parked on the roadside, in the grass, anywhere they could fit. Clearly this was a community coming together for its victims. I have faith they will pull through.
You know the pace of life is slower here when people don't pass a camper doing 50 in a 65 with at least half a mile of completely clear straightaway. I got around all three cars easily. It was a refreshing pace, though, when I stopped for lunch in Haworth. I spent time talking to the business owners in the little market across from the high school. They were interested to meet a highway engineer and road enthusiast, and said they take long roadtrips every year (last year was the Grand Canyon and Utah national parks). Although lunch took about 20 minutes, we had plenty of good chatter and the woman said she liked the idea of my BBQ chicken sub, which I guess just isn't obvious to people who usually deal in beef and cold cuts. (There was no chicken listed on the menu because people can't redeem food stamps for warm sandwiches - now how does that make sense? Temperature is a commodity?) I love stopping at local establishments and getting the local flavor, and I think they appreciate having someone from as far away as NJ stopping by and telling a new tale. You can't do that at a McDonald's.
Definition of irony: There are no gas stations in Oil City (at least on LA 538, old Highway 1).
How to move to Louisiana, part 576: "Bossier" rhymes with "closure," but only when capitalized.
Route (OK-TX-LA-AR): 81 SB-37 EB (old 62 truss)-44 WB-277 SB-76 SB-74B EB (Walnut Creek truss)-74 SB (Walnut Creek truss)-74 NB (former 9 bridge)-35 NB-9 EB-3W EB-old 3-3 EB-AR 32-41 SB-TX 8-59 NB-77 EB-LA 1-538 SB-Clyde Fant and Teague Parkways-20 WB-49 SB-3132 EB-3132 WB-220 EB-20 WB-71 NB-3049 NB (detours for I-49)-71 NB-549 NB-245 NB-67 NB-old 67-108 WB-30 WB-State Line SB-TX 151-51 NB-30 EB
Clinched: OK 74B, TX 8,
Loop 151, LA 538, 3049, 3132, AR 245, 549; Fant/Teague Parkways; I-220
Notes: Unfortunately for all of you, I will not walk on trusses missing large, jagged pieces of deck, out of concern that more deck may follow suit when I'm on it. That rules out the 1913 Walnut Creek bridge. I will also not bypass one "police take notice" barricade to get to a bridge, only to come to another barricade in full view of the Interstate, and then go around THAT as well. (Onto a questionable wooden deck.) That rules out the old US 62 bridge. The others were crossable. Oh, yeah, I also tend to avoid trespassing. Sorry. Not.
The OK 9/3W/US 177/270 interchange is confusing from the ground, maybe because three of the four legs are just two-lane roads. It looks more reasonable from the air, though there's no EB-NB connection. Apparently there's an old alignment of OK 3W that I never noted. It bore off to the left, hit a removed bridge, then started to veer further left (east). At that point I decided to head on over, forsaking my trip on 3W/177. After all that time on Route 66, darned if I'm not following an old concrete road when I see it. 15 minutes and one truss bridge later (overgrown with trees but passable), I'm still on it, but unfortunately it ends south of Highway 39. For the record, do not attempt to travel south of 39. There are large bumps that seem to have been put there by residents (2 dirt, 1 paved) that are not signed in advance and are much larger than you think. I am very glad I have a rental car, but was still worried for a time that I wasn't going to be able to drive it back out. It's a dead end, and just not worth your trouble. I can't fault residents for not wanting people speeding down the street, but for God's sake, put up a warning sign. (As I check a map, this old alignment continues around the west of Tecumseh as 13th St., labeled by Google as Highway 18, clearly the original number.)
I was going to follow old 3 out of Atoka (Court St.) but discovered that 3 now bypasses the town entirely, taking over the last mile of 7. Signage is iffy - this is alternately signed as regular 3 and By-Pass 3, and there are still signs for 3 along the old route (and 7 along the new route up to US 69). US 75 still follows the old route of 3. I'm assuming this was built as a bypass and ODOT later decided the whole thing is 3 (with signage lagging), but maybe someone out there knows otherwise? Further east, it looks like 3 is getting realigned with a new bridge or two. It's just east of the end of the 4-lane, but I don't think this is twinning work for two reasons: 1) It's only for a short distance, and 2) the old road that would become the EB lanes in a twinning project isn't just blocked off, but completely grassed over. ODOT wouldn't go through the trouble of grassing over a future alignment.
There's also dualization at the Pushmahata County line (not shown on the ODOT map), very new and for a short distance. Why doesn't it connect to anything? The road is schizophrenic here, jumping from 2 lanes to 4 divided lanes, back to 2 lanes, back to 4 divided lanes, down to 4 undivided lanes. Between divided sections, the old road is a frontage road on the north side where you'd expect WB lanes. So why not just stripe it as a divided highway? I guess it's because the old road's vertical alignment is quite substandard. The second dualized section shows that the new roadway is aligned to fit between the old road and the modern road (future EB lanes), so I guess the old road would remain as a frontage instead of being reconstructed.
Based on signage at the Indian Nation Turnpike, which still has the old circle shields, 7 and 3 were multiplexed east of Atoka to Antlers. Research says 7 was truncated from Broken Bow to Atoka in 1985 - so are the shields at this exit really that old or is OTA just very slow to adapt?
I noticed an old alignment of 3 near Pine Creek Lake where the old road continued straight, and now the old bridge over the lake has become a fishing pier (east side). If it weren't for the four slow cars and trucks I'd just passed, I would have taken a little time to explore it, but no way was I going to try to pass them again. Besides, it just looks like a garden variety highway bridge.
There's a park in the middle of Clyde Fant Parkway in Shreveport. It's a
Parkway, so I guess there can be a Park there, but it's unusual to have recreation in a highway median. Fant and Teague Parkways on either side of the river are both very nice and scenic drives with very little traffic, but they don't connect anything to anywhere. At least Fant Pkwy. goes past the downtown casino. Both highways have stubs at the southern end, and both just disappear at the northern end. Shreveport should have built one parkway in its entirety instead of two half-roadways. It's somewhat reminiscent of Lake Ontario State Parkway in NY. On another Shreveport note, I-20 desperately needs 3 thru lanes in either direction, both downtown and in the suburbs. Even with I-220, there's just too much traffic on 20 to get by with the two there now on an antiquated freeway with vertical and horizontal curves and high interchange density. In that sense, 20 is like I-95 in Wilmington, DE.
I have I-49 updates for you, but those are going in the
I-49 thread. Click on over. I checked out every crossing I could because of the meet postponement, and also ran down old US 67 to the northeast of town. Neat old road, but doesn't compare to old 66 or even old 177 in Oklahoma. I-130 interchange construction is looking very good at I-30, but not even a blip on the radar on AR 245. In order to build a freeway, it needs to have two ends... by the time I-130 is actually completed, it may well just be numbered I-49 due to the progress north of Shreveport. (Again, see the I-49 thread.)
