Under, Over or Through?

While traveling in Europe recently, we noticed that there seems to be a lot more tunnels (highway and railway) than here in the US. One might argue that there are a lot more hills. But doesn’t it seem like tunnels would be more difficult to build than roadways? And more expensive?

We didn’t expend too much mental energy trying to figure it out. But we did mention it to our Belgian friends. During one of our many conversations, the kind you have when stuck for hour after hour in a car during a long road trip, Hubby or I asked “Why are there so many tunnels here?” Yves’ reply was interesting. And pretty amusing. He said, “Well, because, unlike Americans, we like to make things look nicer and tunnel under stuff that’s in the way. Like mountains. You Americans just blast your way through.”

Good point. Here’s the perfect example of that very thing.

There’s already a road over this mountain. It’s just a regular road, as opposed to a high-speed interstate. So when I-68 was being built, they blasted the mountain away. This is just west of Hancock, Maryland on I-68, not far at all from where I-68 and I-70 meet.

I commonly call it “the cut” because you can see the giant notch that was cut out of the mountain from many miles away. You can READ MORE ABOUT SIDELING HILL if you like.

Seeing the different layers of rock is sort of cool, but it would be more fun if we had a pass like this one.