A few pictures from my walk along Spring Mill Road turned out all right.
I took this northbound photo at 103rd St., which is just beyond the I-465 overpass. I really like how the road ripples where the two cars are on it. The redbud with its purple-pink flowers is common throughout Indiana. There are tons of them along this part of Spring Mill Road.
Hard to believe, but this is considered city, since it’s within the Carmel city limits.
I wanted to stop to take photos at many places as I drove north from here, but Spring Mill Road is narrow and shoulderless, and I wasn’t sure the Carmel police would understand if I parked in the grass alongside some subdivision. This prevented me from getting a photo of a short abandoned segment of Spring Mill Road.
Update 13 May: I found this photo that shows that this segment of Spring Mill Road had already been rerouted in 1958! Look at the bottom edge of the photo.
Orignally, to stay on Spring Mill you had to jog right onto 116th St and then left onto Spring Mill again. The remnant of the original route follows the line of trees in the photo. I’m pretty sure I remember driving this jog a long time ago. The jog was probably fine when this was just a farm road. But as businesses began to locate in Carmel and people figured out they could avoid congested US 31 (the next road to the east) on Spring Mill, it probably got hellaciously congested. First the road curved to avoid this jog, creating a 4-way stop. Then a year or so ago roundabout-happy Carmel built a roundabout here. The aerial image is from before the roundabout, but the Google Maps label overlay shows it. I used to think that Carmel built roundabouts because they didn’t have enough to do with all their money, but now that I drive up here all the time I find that these things really do keep traffic flowing better.
Sorry, enough roadgeekery, back to the flowers. A couple miles north of 103rd St., in the 12600s, the road is lined with what I think are ornamental cherry trees. Their white flowers create real drama along the side of the road.
These trees’ powerful scent filled the air. I liked how the one in the photo below reaches the ground, just spilling over.
I wished I had time to take more photos, but I was sort of playing hooky as it was. So back to work I went.
