Calendar for Annie

The most egregious incorrect trailblazer

Unfortunately I didn't find this, but another road geek on Flickr did. In this picture, a 3di interstate shield has "US 1" instead of interstate numbers. I doubt that I will find anything quite as screwed up as this one.

Road trip to the Oregon Coast via U.S. 20

Last Saturday, some friends and I drove to Newport, OR, which is on the scenic Oregon Coast. We departed from Eugene, so we drove north on I-5, west on OR 34, and then continued west on U.S. 20 when we reached Corvallis. The first minor bit of road related news was the U.S. 20 being signed as OR 20 on the western end of Philomath.

The other, much bigger news was that we discovered that ODOT is straightening out U.S. 20 from Pioneer Mountain to Eddyville. This is no small project, the initial price tag was to be $130 million, but after a discovery of ancient landslides, this amount is expected to increase about $40 million. When the project is completed, an 11 mile windy stretch of road will be replaced by a much straighter 7 mile road, 2/3 of which will have passing lanes. Inside Lincoln County did a 6 minute video about where the project is currently:

The final result of this project should be a win for everybody. It will be easier to ship goods to and from the central coast of Oregon, and it will also be faster for tourists as well. ODOT's site on the project is quite visually appealing, and they even have a Flickr account specifically for it. They have many pictures that most people couldn't take since the majority of the project is only accessible to construction crew members and ODOT personnel. I have included below one of the pictures that I took.

Road guides @ northeastroads

Since the completion of my school year in May, I've made several updates/new pages for northeastroads, one of the regional websites under the AA Roads family of webpages. The following are my contributions/edits:

• Added census data to the main Connecticut page.
• Added complete coverage of I-384.
• Created initial page for CT 2 and created a Hartford-Glastonbury eastbound guide.
• Created initial page for CT 3 with a northbound guide.
• Created initial page for CT 15 with a Wilbur Cross Highway northbound guide.

I have more pictures that have been waiting on the back burner due to my being busy over here in Oregon. I've got a whole bunch of pictures of CT 9, as well as the opposite direction of the current coverage of CT 2, 3, and 15. If things start to slow down here, I'll get to work on those, otherwise I probably won't touch them until the middle of July.

1973 vintage OR 126 shield in Eugene, OR

This vintage OR 126 shield was found heading westbound on West 11th Avenue shortly before its intersection with Bailey Hill Road in Eugene.

Based on the words on the back of the sign, "Repl 1/17/73", this is probably the original OR 126 shield that was installed after the decommissioning of U.S. 126 in 1972. U.S. 126 existed from 1952 to 1972 before reverting to a state highway. Its eastern terminus is at a junction with U.S. 26 in Prineville, and its western terminus is at a junction with U.S. 101 in Florence.

Potential Associate Member

After some emails back and forth between myself and Alex Nitzman of aaroads.com, it appears that I might become an associate member of that site! That would entail me helping out with updates on photos and captions of photos they have in their backlog as well as adding photos of my own. My specialty areas would be Connecticut and Oregon since that's where I have the most pictures and knowledge of. What this means for my site is that I probably won't be adding much if anything else to it since I would like future additions to go to the aaroads family of web sites. My site did serve a purpose; my guide to US 97/Bend Parkway showed that I know how to take decent pictures as well as write captions.

Posted US 6/Windham Expressway Page

Today I finally got to taking the pictures I took of the US 6 expressway in eastern Connecticut and putting them on my site. I only have the westbound guide to it done, but the eastbound guide as well as miscellaneous associated photos won't take too long to post. I have taken some photos of I-384 and have considered contributing them to interstate-guide.com so that those guys can incorporate them into their site. My pictures are decent but they will be helped out by the new 8 MP digital camera that I am getting soon.

Here's the page for the US 6 Expressway.