Travelling West to East Across Texas
We are travelling through Alamogordo, NM to Carlsbad Caverns - Hoping to see the bats take flight! After that...I feel like our epic trip is downhill as we must cross Texas and on home to the east coa...
Forum Discussion
I've always thought San Antonio an interesting place, enough so that I again and again drive two days each way to visit for a week or two at a time.
Goliad is interesting, a state park built around one of the river missions, and a fortress from Texas independence days.
Houston/Galveston area is interesting, another place that I visit repeatedly. Houston is a bustling city with an international, multicultural population, but it does take some time there to catch on to what is happening and learn how to appreciate it.
But most of these bigger places are connected by Interstate highways. The state and U.S.-numbered highways in Texas work pretty well for north-south routes, state keeps them up because they are the main roads, Interstate network is sparse for that direction. The best of the east-west routes got overbuilt by I-10, I-20, I-30.
US-82 goes across the extreme north of the state, in the east. You can catch it at Lubbock and take it to Texarkana, if that's where you are going. I can't promise you any better scenery on US-82 than you would find using I-20/I-30. Since you are going to S.C. you maybe don't want to be much further north than I-20 anyway.
Coming out of Carlsbad puts you on US-180, almost parallel and somewhat north of I-20. You could follow that across to Fort Worth before picking up I-20, but you will be in the same scenery you would have on the Interstate: high desert progressing toward scrublands, then prairie, then woodlands in the eastern part of the state. East of Dallas, US-80 takes you to about the same places I-20 goes, just at a slower pace.
Crossing south of I-20, US-84 will take you through Waco (home of Dr Pepper and the Branch Davidian massacre), then Palestine (a lovely small city in cotton country) then across Louisiana south of Shreveport to enter Mississippi at Natchez. Then you might take the Natchez Trace Parkway up to I-20; this is a popular scenic route through Mississippi.
The difference in these highways from the Interstate would be going through all the towns and small cities, rather than reading the names on the exit signs as you zip by at 70 mph (or maybe 80+).
I find it all interesting, this part of the country, land, culture and agriculture. I find prairie and desert to be scenic. Part of why I choose to live here. Trying to remember what interested me when I was fourteen, other than fourteen-year-old girls. I know I didn't think much of desert and plains landscapes, that didn't start to grow on me until I lived on the plains for 20 years and learned to understand the nature of the land and what sort of people the land created.
Goliad is interesting, a state park built around one of the river missions, and a fortress from Texas independence days.
Houston/Galveston area is interesting, another place that I visit repeatedly. Houston is a bustling city with an international, multicultural population, but it does take some time there to catch on to what is happening and learn how to appreciate it.
But most of these bigger places are connected by Interstate highways. The state and U.S.-numbered highways in Texas work pretty well for north-south routes, state keeps them up because they are the main roads, Interstate network is sparse for that direction. The best of the east-west routes got overbuilt by I-10, I-20, I-30.
US-82 goes across the extreme north of the state, in the east. You can catch it at Lubbock and take it to Texarkana, if that's where you are going. I can't promise you any better scenery on US-82 than you would find using I-20/I-30. Since you are going to S.C. you maybe don't want to be much further north than I-20 anyway.
Coming out of Carlsbad puts you on US-180, almost parallel and somewhat north of I-20. You could follow that across to Fort Worth before picking up I-20, but you will be in the same scenery you would have on the Interstate: high desert progressing toward scrublands, then prairie, then woodlands in the eastern part of the state. East of Dallas, US-80 takes you to about the same places I-20 goes, just at a slower pace.
Crossing south of I-20, US-84 will take you through Waco (home of Dr Pepper and the Branch Davidian massacre), then Palestine (a lovely small city in cotton country) then across Louisiana south of Shreveport to enter Mississippi at Natchez. Then you might take the Natchez Trace Parkway up to I-20; this is a popular scenic route through Mississippi.
The difference in these highways from the Interstate would be going through all the towns and small cities, rather than reading the names on the exit signs as you zip by at 70 mph (or maybe 80+).
I find it all interesting, this part of the country, land, culture and agriculture. I find prairie and desert to be scenic. Part of why I choose to live here. Trying to remember what interested me when I was fourteen, other than fourteen-year-old girls. I know I didn't think much of desert and plains landscapes, that didn't start to grow on me until I lived on the plains for 20 years and learned to understand the nature of the land and what sort of people the land created.
