April 19, 2008: East junction of US 50/63 in central Missouri. My southernmost point traveled on US 63 as a signed route. (Arkansas shoved it onto I-55 and I-40 to nonsensically meander down to Louisiana.) US 63 is four lanes from this point to Kirksville although it is on surface streets in downtown Jefferson City.
July 7, 2008: US 62 and 68 leave Ohio and head into Kentucky northwest of Maysville. US 62 is one of the nation’s longest diagonal routes.
March 19, 2007: North end of US 61 in Wyoming, Minnesota. The route used to go up to Duluth and then along the west side of Lake Superior to Canada.
June 25, 2006: Junction five miles north of the Iowa/Minnesota line by the Minnesota welcome center for both roads. Iowa finished four-laning IA 60 in 2008 and Minnesota is completing the connection to I-90.
Iowa’s design turns 15 years old Monday. Will 999ZZZ show up before the end of 2012?
June 24, 2002: The Avenue of the Saints joins/leaves US 218 near George Wyth State Park in Black Hawk County. Notice the multiple varieties of state route markers on the BGSs, the different letter sizes, and the retrofit of the far-right sign. These have been replaced (Google Street View); IA 27 now comes before IA 58 on the middle sign and the UNI destinations are underneath.
(This also serves as a 57/58 sequential intersection, but the Chicago comparison was too good to pass up.)
Second time that Iowa State has ended with a losing record after a bowl game, after going 5-6-1 in 1972 with a Liberty Bowl loss to Georgia Tech.
June 13, 2008 and June 13, 2011: Old button copy signage along I-94 was replaced with Clearview when the interstate was repaved in the (exactly!) three years between pictures. Notably, I-57 ends short of Memphis, but is a giant “St. Louis bypass” for traffic from the Great Lakes to the lower Mississippi valley. Along the route, as with all interstates in Illinois, smaller, more local control cities are used on intersecting roads’ signs.
October 21, 2007: East end of US 56 in Kansas City. US 56 is poorly signed for its short segment in Missouri and is signed onto busy streets instead of a parkway. (The signage could be inaccurate.)
US 56 goes diagonally across Kansas and the Oklahoma Panhandle, and literally clips the northwest corner of Texas, before ending in New Mexico.
If this holds up (and I don’t see why it wouldn’t), 2012 will be the first time Iowa State does not play either Missouri or Nebraska for the first time since 1904*. It will be the first time Missouri does not play Kansas for the first time in 121 years. (Kansas has been a state for 150 years, Missouri 191.)
Note that Georgia goes to Columbia…and Columbia.
The Big 12 better get every last cent owed in exit fees.
EDIT: *Excluding the 3-game 1918 season. The particulars:
Missouri but not Nebraska (3): 1917, 1920, 2011
Nebraska but not Missouri (8): 1897-1901, 1905-1907
Neither (8): 1892-1895, 1902-1904, 1918
