I-10
never meanders
It blasts
through the
swamps hanging with Spanish moss
the occasional forests
and mile after endless mile of deserts
It blasts
through towns like
Las Cruces
Indio
Tucson
Lordsburg
Deming
El Paso
And the water places, the humid places
Baton Rouge
Pensacola
Lafayette
Gulfport
Biloxi
From
Santa Monica on the west &
Jacksonville on the east
There is life between the two &
yet
I-10 is a staggeringly lonely place
Still Amazed 
You are dead right, Miles, about I-10 being “a staggeringly lonely place”. But all the big interstate highways are that way. Having driven back and forth across the nation a few times, I can tell you that those major highways are awesomely lonely at times. Which makes the appearances of big and little towns in the distance most welcome. It can seem to take forever to actually get to them though. Happily, there are some mighty strange things here and there in that desolation in between. There’s a dinosaur and way down the road there’s a huge crater where a meteor hit, for two of them. And truck stops! I love those truck stops. Coffee is inside those doors. :)))