Dallas Misdirection

I mentioned minor trouble in Dallas on the way down to Vicksburg, MS, in a previous post. It was somewhat comical, especially in retrospect, so I figured I'd relay the details in a post.

I'm not particularly familiar with the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area, which the locals call the "Metroplex." When we drive to Goliad, we take I-35W through Fort Worth - some might recall the deer stand on the interstate incident on that stretch of road. When we go to Houston, we take the I-35E branch to I-45. However, there are a lot of roads that spiderweb around the Metroplex.

Preparing for the trip, I pulled up the GoogleMaps directions to see how far it was (about 550 miles) and also saw that it was primarily I-35 and I-20 driving. I-20 goes through Dallas (the I-20/I-45 interchange is always a little dicey when we drive to Houston, but I never look to see the specifics related to getting on I-20) and also goes right through Vicksburg (along with Shreveport and Monroe, LA). I didn't zoom in on the Dallas portion to see optimal south to east transition, however.

We easily made it to Chipotle in Denton (I'd done that before). Then, we set back out going south on I-35E, thinking we'd see signage directing us to I-20/Shreveport. We went by the exit to get on I-45 and I asked Casey to look at his iPhone to see how we get to I-20, because I didn't want to get too far and have to back track. Next up was the exit for I-30, but his map program wasn't updating quickly enough, so we passed that up, too. I decided to exit to wait for a verdict, and we decided to turn around, go back a couple miles to I-30, then take that east and cut down to I-20 on highway 175. I-20, as it turns out, runs along the southern side of the Metroplex, just north of DeSoto, TX, where OSU WR Dez Bryant was when the Cowboys picked him in this year's NFL Draft.

We navigated the I-30 to 175 to I-20 splendidly. At one point, we went by a place called "The Ghetto Club." Pressed for time, somewhat, we decided not to stop and check the place out, although I'm sure many people have a fabulous time there (DFW seems to be littered with strips clubs and the like, for those of you who haven't frequented the area. One place with a number of billboards is called "Spearmint Rhino." Seems like an odd name, but I guess it's probably unique.).

We figured we were home free, so to speak, when we hit I-20. But, apparently, to stay on I-20, we had to exit off I-20/I-635 ... or maybe to get on I-20 you have to do that. Either way, we didn't (you have to do it right after the switch over from 175) and we ended up on I-635. Some time later, we were still in the city, which I thought was a little odd. But, having never traversed that stretch of road, I just went with it. About half an hour later, I saw a sign for North Dallas Bank, and thought it was weird because we should be in east Dallas and Casey made a remark about Dallas being huge. He pulled out his iPhone and we discovered that we were on I-635 on the north side of Dallas!


View Dallas Misdirection in a larger map The funny thing, looking back, is that we were exactly where we should have been, although we shouldn't have taken nearly as long to get there. The optimal route, according to Google, is to take I-35E to I-635 to highway 80 to I-20, which is the route we took once we got going the correct direction. Not surprisingly, this is also the route we took, in reverse (directions, not car gear), on the way back to Norman. Finally, we were able to get back on track. Rough calculations using direction and trip mileage estimate the extra driving distance to be about 50 miles. But, it wasn't a big deal, we still arrived in plenty of time, and we got to see more of Dallas than we otherwise would have.

P.S. I-20 through eastern Texas and Louisiana is pretty lame. For a lot of the miles, the interstate is lined with evergreens on both sides. While this might seem like nice scenery, it drastically limits the viewing extent and quickly becomes quite monotonous. I'm guessing there isn't a lot of breath-taking scenery in the area, but I really have no idea. I do know that evergreens grow well and there are quite a few bayous that intersect I-20 in LA.