Well I’m in Austin, Texas and having a pretty good time. At this point a good amount of time that I’ve spent on vacation has been on the road. I traveled via Tulsa, OK to visit my Aunt Tara along the way and only made one other pit stop in Lamar, MO for gas. Well one other pit stop might not be entirely acurate… The trip went fairly uneventfully excepting some minor directional issues. I managed to get myself slightly lost in Kansas City due to accidentally leaving my directions in the back seat (my wayward travels can bee seen in the above linked map, you’ll not that I didn’t get too far before realizing I was going the wrong way).
Some additional fun I had in Mossuri resulted from a great lack of gas stations along US-71. You’d think allong such a long strech of road there would be quite a few gas stations but there is in fact very very few. So few that the fuel light on my car turned on near Sheldon, MO (marked on the map as well). I drove into Sheldon to find that it was a small town of about five hundred people and one gas station, a gas station closed till Saturday. I made it to Lamar, MO just fine to find the first highway-side gas station since the Kansas City area.
In addition to the fun in Missouri I ran into difficulty when trying to get onto the MO-Pac Expressway in Austin off of exit 251 of Interstate 35. You’ll notice that there are in fact TWO exit 251 one of which is the correct one, the other is the one you will come across first when approaching Austin from the north. It’s pretty much the most ridiculous series of exits in existence. Despite the incompotence of both myself, Adam Smith’s invisible hand (for not providing gas stations near the highway on US-71 where there is clearly a demand) and the Austin City Planners I managed to make it to Peter and Patricia’s Appartment safely.
I'm Trevin Ward, I'm a Political Science Student at Iowa State University in Ames, IA.