Skip to main content

2017 Southeast Trip; Part 1 (To Florida)

Back in May of last year I took a trip out to the Southeast region starting with Florida.  Usually I'm not a fan of flying but my flight path from Fresno to my layover in Denver is one of the more scenic that I know of in the Continental United States.  The snow pack flying east over over the Sierras and the Minarets region was massive after a stormy winter.






Mono Lake in the background and Crowley Lake in the foreground on the eastern slopes of the Sierras entering the Great Basin.   Crowley Lake is a reservoir in the Los Angeles Aqueduct Project while Mono Lake is a large salt water body with volcanic islands.





The White Mountains at the state line boundary of California and Nevada.  The high peak in the White Mountains is White Mountain Peak at 14,252 feet above sea level.





Traveling eastward into Nevada the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project could be seen to the north of Tonopah and US 95/6.   The Crescent Dunes Project was completed in 2015 but was turned off-line for about a year after completion due to leaks in the molten salt tank.





There wasn't much to see in Utah and the Colorado Plateau due to cloud cover but upon entering Colorado I could see Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.





There was cloud cover over Denver which meant for bumpy conditions but a good portion of the Front Range of the Rockies could be see poking above the clouds.











After a brief layover at Denver International Airport I bordered my flight for Tampa.  There wasn't much to be seen out the window as the cloud cover was thick but it cleared up enough by Louisiana to see the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway.  The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway is about 24 miles in length which carries traffic from I-10 in New Orleans to US 190 on the north side of the lake.  The Lake Pontchartrain Causeway southbound lanes were completed in 1956 while the northbound lanes were completed in 1969.







After crossing the Gulf my plane landed in Florida and thus the Southeast began proper.  This was a massive trip with about 3,000 miles planned in; Florida, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and South Carolina.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Did Caltrans just kill the G26 cutout US Route shields?

The US Route System was formally created by the American Association of State Highway Officials during November 1926.  Through the history of the system the only state to which has elected to maintain cutout US Route shields has been California.  The G26 series cutout US Route shields have become a favorite in the road enthusiast hobby and are generally considered to be much more visually pleasing than the standard Federal Highway Administration variant.  However, the G26 shield series appears to have been killed off on January 18, 2026, when Caltrans updated their Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices.  This blog will examine the history of the US Route shield specifications in California and what is happening with the 2026 changes.  The blog cover photo is facing towards the terminus of California State Route 136 and at a G26-2 specification US Route 395 shield.  In the background Mount Whitney can be seen in the Sierra Nevada range.   ...

May 2023 Ontario Trip (Part 3 of 3)

  Over the years, I have made plenty of trips to Ontario, crisscrossing the southern, central and eastern parts of the province. Living in Upstate New York, it's pretty easy to visit our neighbor to the north, or is that our neighbor to the west? Ottawa is one of my favorite cities to visit anywhere in the world, plus I've discovered the charm of Kingston, the waterfalls of Hamilton (which is on the same Niagara Escarpment that brings us Niagara Falls), the sheer beauty of the Bruce Peninsula, and more. But I hadn't explored much of Cottage Country. So I decided to change that, and what better time to go than over Memorial Day weekend, when the daylight is long and I have an extra day to explore. On the third and final day of my trip, I started in Huntsville and made my way through Muskoka District and Haliburton County, passing by many lakes along the way. I stopped in towns such as Dorset, Haliburton and Bancroft before making a beeline down to Belleville and then over th...

Ghost Town Tuesday; Nichols, FL

A couple years ago I spent a lot of spare time exploring phosphate mining ghost towns in the Bone Valley of Polk County, Florida.  One ghost town in particular called Nichols on Polk County Route 676 west of Mulberry caught my eye due to a relative lack of documentation on ghosttowns.com. Nichols was created in 1905 during the early phosphate mining boom in the Bone Valley region.  For the time Nichols was unusual since it had company housing in the Nichols Mine site and private residences outside the gate.  Nichols is only about two miles west of Mulberry which probably made it a somewhat reasonable commute even by the wonky standards of the early 20th Century.  Most of the Bone Valley region was relatively remote which made commuting or homesteading impractical which is why there are so many ghost towns in the area.  The company housing section of Nichols was phased out and abandoned by 1950. The Nichols town site is largely abandoned and could "possibl...