Well today (Dec. 21 ) held some surprises for me! So I’m going to tell you about one of them right away! 🤗

Today was moving day. So after dumping my tanks, I was on the road by 9:45 a.m. . I had 265 miles to drive to Palmetto State Park. It is 65 miles east of San Antonio, Texas. The state highways down to Houston were pretty good and then I took a relatively newly constructed bypass around the north side of Houston. Highway 99. It hasn’t built up around it too badly yet so the traffic was light to moderate. It is 55 miles from the eastside of Houston, around the north side and back down on the west side. Big city!

I then hooked up with interstate 10 and 33 miles of construction. It wasn’t too bad except for the zigzagging of the lanes and the cement barriers to the sides. 😬 After that it was smooth sailing for about 10 miles until there was a significant backup because of an accident up ahead.

My GPS showed it would be 17 minutes to get through that area! Interestingly, running right to the side of us was a frontage road. And unlike our roads in Wisconsin, there is absolutely no fencing of any kind between the highway and the road. To make it even nicer, there was grass and a mild ditch. Well you can imagine what happened. It didn’t take long for a couple of pickup trucks to just cut right across that grass onto the frontage road and away they went.

But what was even better, there was a dirt/gravel road that went right from the highway to the frontage road. It cut through like the ones we have between our four laners going over the median that are just for emergency vehicles or the police. So people started to take that way over to the frontage road. There were also a few homes there with driveways , so maybe that’s how they cut off the highway to their homes but that seems pretty dangerous.

A pickup truck with an empty trailer a couple vehicles ahead of me, used that gravel road to turn onto the frontage road. However he no more than made the turn and a police SUV was there ! Lights went on and he was pulled over. 😱

Unfortunately I followed him 🤣 !

So as I went by she waved me to pull over, too. Damn! If I had been looking straight ahead I could have kept right on going!! 😆 Maybe!

It was a female sheriff and as she was working with the guy farther behind me, I got out of the truck to walk around because I was getting so stiff from driving already. I know you’re not supposed to get out of your vehicle. When she approached I apologized and said why I was out of the truck. It was no problem.

I asked her why I was stopped. She said I was stopped because I was going across the median on a road that was only for emergency vehicles. She was originally from up North she said and understood my confusion . I told her I didn’t want to sound stupid but that I really thought it was okay to cut across there because of the other homes I saw there and that it was unmarked. And I never thought of that as being a median. She understood, but further explained why it was considered a median and that you can’t cut across it. After collecting my license, she said she would just give me a warning. 👍

When she came back I did find out that she grew up in Virginia but spent a year in Michigan. So she knew we did not have connecting roads like that to our frontage roads. I asked if I could take her picture and it was funny because the first thing she said was “but my hair is a mess today”! 😅 She was really nice and now I have a very unique souvenir of Texas! 🤔 I thought you would enjoy that story!! 😊

I did continue on the frontage road. A few other vehicles did cut across and drove past while she was busy with us, the stinkers. Others had taken the exit ramp off the highway to the frontage road as word got out of the backup, so the road got pretty busy. I did come out on the other side of the mess and continued back on the interstate. But I’m sure, all together, it took more than 17 minutes!! 🙄😅

She told me to drive safe, especially pulling that RV. I did wish her a Merry Christmas and to stay safe. 👍 All good. 🤗