Monday, November 4, 2013

85mph in Texas?!!

I've been on the road traveling in Texas.
speed limit sign @  85mph on Texas Toll Road -130
We My husband had a meeting to attend in San Antonio and we decided to go and spend a couple of days there and visit it.  He had gone to school there and always had found memories.  We had talked about doing this numerous times but with kids in the house it just was too much of a hassle to try to do.  That is until now since my oldest is back living at home and my youngest is almost 15 we finally felt it would be okay to leave them alone for a short period of time.   Over the next couple of days I will be posting more things but for now I just want to talk about one road we took to get there. It's Texas Toll Road  130.

Have you ever seen a car from Texas and its driving fast?  I have and I never realize why they like to drive so fast until I got onto Texas Toll Road 130.   After you've been on that road everything else makes you feel like you are just putting along.

     We got on it to bypass Austin TX and missed the exit to get off because our google search had the road ending there.   But the road did not end there and kept on and so did we and it was too late to realize we had missed the exit to do anything about it.  We thought we would just continue and then get off when we would see the signs for San Antonio since that's what we were doing  anyway when we missed the turn - ie following the signs to San Antonio.


I LOVE THAT ROAD!!  When you get to the toll area you don't stop - you just drive through and it snaps your car license plate and you get the bill in the mail.

    This new section I liked even more because the legal speed limit was 85 mph.  At first I thought I saw it wrong but no it was right.

We decided to kept to the speed limit since we knew the computers were tracking us anyway and they could just as easily tack on a speeding ticket to the toll road payment we would be getting.  But even at 85 it was scary since we are not used to driving so fast. Everything just seem to wiz by.  The road was in good condition and the traffic light.  What a way to travel!!!
The area is so flat, there's no wonder why they could have those speeds.
in the way distance is the City of Austin.  You can see it can't you? its left of center near where a ray of light is coming down.
 Here was the next photo that I cropped. and you can still just barely see it even making it extra large.

Austin as seen from Toll Road -130



We could stay on it long before we were on I-10.  We did see a very pretty sunset. And these did not do justice to it.
sunset on San Antonio as see from  I-10
And here it is cropped so you can see the city.

Now for the geology part of it.  When I see how flat everything is it gave me a new understanding as to what a peneplain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peneplain   would look like.  But then as I was reading this about peneplains it said not to be confused with  depositional plains so I tried to look up depositional plains and guess where it sent me to - peneplains.  The also suggested looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alluvial_plain   Alluvial plains too. 
 Now I'm working on some other stuff.

2 comments:

  1. Getting lost is half the fun! I was born in Houston TEXAS and we do love to drive fast. Houston is very flat...............you will have to educate me on the geology part as I am already lost on the "plains" thing!
    .........................Judy

    ReplyDelete
  2. I know what you mean about Houston being flat and having to avoid the flash floods that happen when it rains. I'll explain the peneplain thing to you someday when we have a little bit of time to chat.

    ReplyDelete