Traffic

Friday morning we had plans to do several things.  Visit a friend that just had surgery, have some breakfast tacos on our way and head over the next town for something the wife wanted.  Not a real big day but enough to keep us busy for a few hours.  Those few hours wound up being a little longer than anticipated. 

To get into the area we needed to go to, to see our friend and eat tacos requires a trip into town. 

There are really only 3 ways in that all parallel each other and only one is a major roadway (4 lane divided.)  That is also one of the busiest most hair pulling drives in our county of over 2 million.  It is something we have learned to avoid at the worst times.  We approached that road at about 8:45 AM, this should be on the outside edge of rush hour.  No idea what was going on but the highway was backed up to the area where we usually get on.  So we diverted to one of the parallel roadways.  I picked the wrong one.  Everyone else had the same idea.  We made a 180 to head to the other parallel roadway.  That was a drive in itself.  We finally arrived at the hospital about 2 hours later.  Yes we ate first so that took some time.

After our visit we headed out to the other destination.  It happens to be in one of the top 5 growing counties in the US.  It also sits on one of the major N/S interstates, IH 35.  No traffic jams this time but there was more traffic than usual.  

By the time we did that errand and started home we had to divert one more time due to traffic.  It felt like I had been driving forever by the time we got home.  All told it was probably 150 miles and more time than was planned.  I like to drive, but this day with all the many diversions and the overwhelming amount of traffic, I think staying home would have been a better idea.

No, it's not as bad here as maybe some places in Dallas and Houston, but for me, that has seen what it used to be and what it has become in just a few years, it's hard to take in the amount of growth we have seen.  They just started a 4 year major rebuild of the one major highway we use to get into town.

SMH.  We are making contingencies for alternate routes for various thing we do.  Some will work fine, others, not so much.

No, I'm not whining.  Lamenting, yeah, that's it, lamenting lol.

Happy Trails