Location Taken: Pennsylvania
Time Taken: June 2010
I have an odd fascination with road construction. There’s something really nifty about seeing the bones of the road and the earth, laid out before you. Before they were covered, and they will soon be covered again. But for a moment in time, a traffic-delaying months-long moment, they are revealed.
Well, I suppose it’s not too odd. I come by it legitimately. My Grandpa was a civil engineer, and three of his kids followed in his footsteps. My mom wasn’t one of them, but she did inherit a love of roads, earth, and construction that she passed on to me. Which is why I write about geology and travel so often.
I’d have not a clue where this picture was taken if it wasn’t for that milemarker sign. Even then, I had to half-guess. Road construction, as intricate and fascinating as it is, still largely looks the same aside from vaguarities of local geography. I couldn’t have taken this photo in Kansas, for instance.
Not that I’ve been to Kansas since long before I started taken photos. I mainly recall flatness. Well, that and weather. Kansas seems to delight in tossing… interesting… weather at us. First time I went through there, while on a road trip to Colorado helping a friend move (I was 8 or so), we ran into snow. Lots of snow. In March. We got snowed in in a tiny hotel (luckily with a connected restaurant) for a day or two, completely unplanned. On a later trip, we largely avoided Kansas, merely coming close to it – and encountered heavy hail, with tornadoes nearby, just over the border in Kansas. Much later, we flew over Kansas – and encountered thunderstorms and heavy turbulance while we were above it. Mom jokingly says Kansas hates her.
Admittedly, incliment weather is one of the things Kansas is good at. It’s located right on the line where the dry cold air coming from Canada meets the warm wet air from the Gulf of Mexico for most of the year. Thunderstorms (and other storms) are caused by such mixing of air temperatures and moisture. It’s why there are so many tornadoes in this area too, though the major outbreaks seem to form further to the east. Kansas gets them quite frequently, though.
Ah, a post diverting from road construction to tornadoes. Two things I’m rather fond of, both of which cause great delays when they come to visit.
