Thoughts From a Road Trip

Here are miscellaneous thoughts in no particular order:

One of the numerous small towns in southern Missouri
along U.S. 60.

The drive from Springfield, MO to Sikeston, MO on U.S. 60 across the southern part of the state is a very pleasant drive with little traffic and a near interstate-quality highway. The scenery of the Ozarks is nice if you like lots of trees. It bypasses most of the small towns.

The very best service station between Wichita and Nashville is Kerr's in Poplar Bluff, MO. Gas was $3.34 and the bathrooms were among the cleanest we have ever seen. The staff was extremely pleasant.

 

Is there a worse GPS routing system than Apple Car Play? You are better off with a road atlas. Car Play wants to take you through little towns and two-lane blacktops as it seems to want to lead you on the absolute shortest route -- even if it takes longer and the roads it recommends are terrible. The only thing of interest we saw that we wouldn't have otherwise is that the U.S. 60 bridges over the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers give you a nice view of the southernmost tip of Illinois where the confluence occurs. The bridges are extremely narrow and appear to have been built using erector sets. 

 

The NOAA release you heard about last week pertaining to billion-dollar disasters in 2023 is nothing but propaganda. The agency overstates "billion dollar disasters" by grouping unrelated storms in different areas of the nation over several days (look closely at the captions). The Joplin Tornado was a billion dollar disaster. Hurricane Katrina was a billion disaster. Only a few of these qualify. 

Of course, the MSM loves global warming porn, so they lapped it up. It is a shame NOAA has squandered its once-sterling reputation for quality science. 

Throughout the trip, I was bombarded with people who thought meteorologists' forecasts for Hurricane Lee were wrong. "It is going to veer off and hit NYC as a Cat 3" said one of them. 

Turned out, the forecasts were excellent. 

 

Public works projects pertaining to highways are nothing but jobs programs these days. In our 1500 miles we passed countless "work zone" lane closures that seems to be closed solely because there were a bunch of orange barrels blocking the way! There were no signs of, you know, “work” being done, regardless of them being perfect days for outdoor work. There were also numerous signs about the evils of speeding through these sites (where no work was being done, no signs of moved dirt or even equipment along the shoulders) but, perhaps people would take these caution signs more seriously if there weren’t so many “false alarms.”