day three

Date: 20 May 2007
Start: Sulphur, Louisiana
End: Decatur, Texas (with stop-over in Houston, Texas)
Distance Travelled: 485 miles
Duration: 13 hours, 30 minutes (with five hours spent in Houston)
Map link (approximate information provided for Houston, for privacy’s sake, and for Dallas, since we got so horribly lost)
This, the third day of our trip, was somewhat unique. Going from Sulphur, LA to Decatur, TX could have been almost a straight shot, more or less, except that we knew people living in Houston from back in our college days, and figured this would be as good a time as any to swing by and visit them. The added benefit to this is that they both work at the NASA Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, and were able to take us on a behind-the-scenes tour – not something to be passed up lightly, believe you me.
However, I am getting ahead of myself. Upon entering Texas, you are, relatively shortly, confronted with what has to be a rather unique distance sign, proclaiming that El Paso is over 800 miles away – well, if that does not get your attention, I do not know what will. Unfortunately, we missed the chance to photograph it, and it was not repeated. Of course, an interesting thing you will see on both sides of the Texas/Louisiana border are fields and fields of what appear to be paddies, as if they are were growing rice or something similar. On closer inspection, though, you see buoys floating on the water, which does not make a whole lot of sense… Those, ladies and gentlement, are crawfish farms. I think they would sound better as “crawfish ranches”, but, either way, it is certainly an interesting sight as you drive along. Regardless, shortly after the border, if you pull off at the gas station on the north side of the highway in Orange, you have the golden opportunity to purchase a 52 ounce fountain drink (yes, fifty-two)… along with a screaming “state monkey” (a stuffed monkey with very long arms and legs, velcro feet and hands, and a t-shirt proclaiming his love of Texas). I am not sure which was more disturbing, but it is worth the stop, if nothing else – 52 ounces may not last you across the entirety of Texas, but it surely will come close.
Well, after that, we made it to Houston… mostly without incident. A word of caution, however. Due to our lacking inventory in car-mounted GPS units… or GPS units of any variety… we relied on Google Maps and our ream of AAA paper maps to get us cross-country. As any frequent traveller knows, both Google Maps and Mapquest (arguably the two largest names in the business) frequently have… issues. Sometimes it is due to faulty information, sometimes it is due to new roads, and sometimes, just sometimes, it is due to the completely assinine design of a city. Houston falls under the last category. Just about every one of their highways, major or minor, has frontage roads running along the sides of them. These roads are nothing more than one-way, two-lane asphalt tracks, mirroring the larger roads not a few feet from them, and serve as the fallen log upon which businesses can sprout, right next to the highway. This is all good and well, at least for the businesses, but with the plethora of exits to and onramps from those access roads, I think Google Maps suffered a schizoid break – it basically filed both the frontage road and its parent highway as the same road, and frequently tells you to go from one to the other… for no apparent reason. Our directions through Houston contained no fewer than four exits/merges that, if we had executed them, would have amounted to nothing more than hopping off the highway… onto the frontage road… and back again. Huh? The good news, however, is that Houston appears to have a relatively comprehensive HOV network, and if I-45N was any indication, it was well needed. The downsides, however, are that it is only available Monday to Friday, 0500 to 2300 (and they barricade it off when not open, so no sneaking on), and it bears a remarkable resemblance to a pinball chute, with just a single lane and high jersey barriers. Possibly a little disconcerting, that. And a final word of caution concerning driving on Houston highways – they like left exits, and the highways there are rather wide. Plan ahead appropriately.
The good news is that once we made it to Houston and hooked up with our college friends, the tour of NASA was definitely worth it. We got up-close and personal with an original Saturn V (that was in a public area, though, so anyone can do that), and then got to wander around Mission Control and actually go in the rooms where they control shuttle missions. The International Space Station control room was actually being used (duh), so we could not go in there, but we watched them work for a bit, and were able to quiz our two guides all we liked. And, finally, we got to crawl up into one of the space shuttle flight simulators – the ones with the hydraulic suspensions that allow the simulated cockpit to perform simulated, but very realistic-feeling maneuvers and all that good stuff. Unfortunately, we could not talk the operator into turning it on for us, but it was cool enough as is.
Unfortunately, though, we had to move on… travelling cross-country on a schedule is sometimes quite a bear. As we travelled up I-45 North, though, we came across something that touted itself as the world’s largest statue of an American hero. Well, that was worth stopping for, schedule or no. Of course, I cannot imagine there are that many statues of American heroes outside of America, but that is a minor quibble. Regardless, on the east side of I-45, just before exit 112, there exists a positively ginormous statue of Sam Houston, overlooking the… well… traffic. Of course, a little-known fact is that if you get off at 112, and take the access road (there they are again!) on the west side of the highway down to where you can stand across from the statue, if you get your perspectives right, you can squish Sam’s head. No kidding.
Farther up the way, things get even more interesting. What, more interesting than squishing Mr. Houston’s head? Yup. Consider: a flying bulldozer, random space craft pieces, and an envy-inducing fishing rod and fish. All of these items are visible on the south side of a town called Corsicana, Texas, and are easily accessible right off I-45. Be careful, though – the space craft bits are defended by what appeared to be a rather feisty-looking llama. If you keep driving north up I-45, you will eventually come across a small town called Ennis, and shortly after that, you will come across one of the largest still-functioning drive-in movie theaters I have seen – the Galaxy, boasting four remarkably large display surfaces. And, judging from the traffic rolling into her and already parked within, business is doing quite well. It is always good to see pieces of America’s history surviving and thriving… and the best news is that this was far from the last instance. After all, Route 66 is somewhere along this trip…
Unfortunately, shortly after the Galaxy, our trip went to hell in a handbasket – we found Dallas. At this point, it was already late in the evening, and we were getting tired… We were coming up I-45N into Dallas, and were getting ready to swing off on exit 286A … and the ramp was closed. There was no advance warning – besides a mile of traffic beforehand – and the first indication we had that the roadway was closed was coming up on the police cruisers blocking off the passage. Crud. Apparently, they were doing construction on the overpass that comprised the ramp – why this was not announced farther down the road so we could have compensated appropriately, I have no idea, but, then I am not a civil engineer. And, of course, no detour or alternate route information was provided. About an hour later and a lot of strange turns and course changes, we were able to navigate our way back out of downtown Dallas (that was our first mistake – going downtown), but that was probably the least enjoyable evening of the entire trip – and also the shortcoming of relying on Google maps and fold-up paper maps. Granted, this was the only instance on the entire trip, but it would have been really, really nice to have had a GPS unit in the car, such that it could adaptively find us a new way out of that town. We did, however, find something interesting on our travels – an honest-to-God Muffler Man at the intersection of the Northwest Parkway (Route 12, I believe) and Lakefield Parkway. Unfortunately, we did not have the opportunity to record him on film. After that, we had dinner at a Whattaburger on TX-183 in Irving (which, coincidentally, had Diet Dr. Pepper – this made Better Half very happy), and made our way on. Unfortunately, we did encounter some more construction on TX-183 right after 121 merged with it, but there were at least warning signs this time around, and the delays were not that substantial. Of course, the time of night might have had something to do with that…
Once we finally made it to Decatur, Texas, we checked into the Holiday Inn Express there ($60 a night, plus tax) and passed out. The next morning we were able to ascertain that the hotel was actually decently nice – the rooms were rather large for an “economy”-end hotel, and were kept quite clean with good quality linens (always a good thing, at least in my book). By way of hardware, there was a combination microwave/refridgerator unit by the desk, but, unfortunately, it lacked a freezer. Additionally, the showerhead was one of the Holiday Inn Express spiffy new ones, and, while it was not as transcendantly hedonistic as their webpage would like you to believe, but I certainly have no complaints about it, and it surely beats some of the alternatives. As with the previous hotel, the wireless internet was easy to use and sufficiently fast, so that certainly met our needs. The breakfast was a little more comprehensive than the previous one, and had a lot more variety to it, but they started putting away the items a good hour before their posted close time, which is something of a bummer if you are trying to get a little extra sleep. All said, it was an acceptable place to lay your head for the day.
So, highlights of the day? NASA, by far, but Corsicana was certainly interesting… Dallas, on the other hand… yeah, I could do with never going back there, ever again. I mean, for Heaven’s sake, they cheer for the Cowboys.
Day one and day two can be found on their respective pages, and pictures from day three can be found here.