Northbound on I-35

Today was another example of why I generally like to stick to the more minor roads.  We drove north through Austin on Interstate 35 and were stuck in a traffic slowdown through nearly the entire city.  Three lanes of impatient drivers averaging perhaps 20 miles per hour.  There were at least two rear-end collisions, probably caused by impatience, which slowed traffic even more.

Then, with no visible cause, speeds increased to the posted speed limit and beyond.  Now the problem is those same impatient drivers doing 10 to 20 over in a 75 mph zone.  It would be easy to dismiss this by saying ​only in Texas​, but this type of thing happens just about anywhere.

We stopped at McKinney State Park near Austin for a few hours and did some hiking and a little biking there.  We would have done some more biking as most of the trails allowed bicycles, however all of the longer trails involved crossing Onion Creek at a point just above Lower McKinney Falls.  The crossing was shallow enough, but the rock was very uneven and covered with super slippery moss, so there was a good likelihood that one or both of us would have ended up flat on our backs in the water.  So we didn’t attempt the crossing.

It was a beautiful day for a hike, sunny, around 70 degrees.  It felt good to enjoy the day outside for a few hours.

After some additional driving which took way too long due to the traffic in Austin, we stopped for the night in Temple, Texas, at a Cracker Barrel along I-35.  We only covered a little over 200 miles today.  It felt like about 500.  Our trajectory, however, now has a very northward vector to it.