#17: [08-Apr-24]

#16: [14-Feb-16]

#15: [22-Mar-13]

#14: [21-Jan-11]

#13: [15-Jan-11]

#12: [07-Mar-09]

#11: [10-Apr-07]

#10: [12-Jul-06]

#9: [21-Mar-06]

#8: [05-Nov-05]

#7: [02-Mar-05]

#6: [08-Jan-05]

#5: [27-Mar-04]

#4: [20-Jan-04]

#3: [15-Jun-02]

#2: [04-Aug-00]

#1: [08-Mar-98] (incomplete)

01-Jun-2025 --

To mark the start of June and unofficial start of summer, our group ventured into the DFW metro area for a culturally enriching afternoon of Buc-ee's, In-N-Out, and office park tourism (i.e., confluence hunting). This was mere days after their beloved NHL team (the Dallas Stars) lost a conference final series against the Edmonton Oilers — a truly sad time for the Metroplex. Today's capstoning confluence visit would take all of five minutes and bring us to the heart of milquetoast suburban office zoning (an area probably less invested in playoff hockey); no matter what a trip to the area was for or about, it would be strange not to swing by 33N 97W, undoubtedly one of the easiest and most accessible confluences in North America.

Perhaps embarrassingly but appropriately, our entire time in the Metroplex this afternoon was spent in Denton County, a very rapidly growing suburban area. The population has more than doubled since 2000 (from ~400,000 to just over 1,000,000 today), and nearly quadrupled since 1990 (when it stood near 270,000). Given this fact, most of what we saw today was on the newer side, representative of sprawly middle-class development circa the early 21st century. On arrival to the concrete jungle, we stopped at an In-N-Out in Denton for lunch (18.5 mi/30 km NW of the confluence). The sheer variety of chain restaurants off this particular freeway exit was astounding; there aren't many places where you'll find an In-N-Out, Braum's, Portillo's, and Waffle House in such close proximity. We also felt obligated to stop at Buc-ee's (13.5 mi/22 km NW of 33N 97W), a chain of absurdly large gas station and convenience stores based in Texas (and a monument to car-centric excess). Not to romanticize it too much, but it's a very "American" sort of place — a melting pot of all ages and races enjoying the trappings of an extremely souped up 7-Eleven that also makes brisket and has a gift shop.

We hopped back on the freeway and continued about 15 minutes further south to Lewisville, the community where the confluence is located. Unlike rural/isolated confluence hunts, the navigation to our goal was simple and uneventful: after getting off the freeway, we followed a sequence of major arterial roads followed by several smaller roads between parking lots. In this case, we approached from the north via TX 121 to Round Grove Rd, which provided access to the office park we were looking for. On this Sunday afternoon, the parking lots were almost completely empty, save for a few stragglers and an occupied security vehicle that we hoped didn't find our presence too unusual. We did actually manage to miss a turn in the parking lot road network, and in the end our total mileage (entirely within the office park complex) came out to almost two miles (3 km). Eventually the coordinates directed us to the recognizable grassy spot beside the "Convergence" sign, just past a loading and delivery area to the northwest.

Our goal was adjacent to yet another empty parking lot (see photo), the only visible vehicles located in a fenced-off enclosure to the west. We made use of this ample parking space and walked over to the somewhat new cooling tower structure (that first appeared in visit #16 in 2016). The GPS zeroes dance took a couple minutes but the satisfying reading showed up soon enough, signalling that we'd likely stepped on 33N 97W — Kyle's first confluence, and Jack, Andrew, and Danielle's first in Texas! The views from this spot were sterile, if I had to choose one word. The emptiness and plain buildings reminded me of something one might see in a video game, a functional area that isn't meant to be pondered much. It's likely the backdrop to many folks' Mondays through Fridays, and some of them have probably zero-metered this point too, whether they know it or not. I enjoyed the absurdity of gawking and taking photos at this seemingly unremarkable spot — the fact that such a place can in fact be remarkable (and worth visitng for some people) is one of my favorite aspects of confluence hunting. The skies were almost perfectly empty of clouds but not airplanes: we spotted a number of them during our short visit, the confluence being only 6 mi (10 km) from DFW International Airport (one of the busiest in the world). The weather was typical of an early summer afternoon, fairly muggy with a temperature in the mid 80s (~30°C) and a light southerly breeze.

After a couple minutes on site and a group photo (not pictured here) in front of the cooling tower, we concluded our office park visit and started back on the stroad. We departed westbound through the affluent suburb of Flower Mound (perhaps the largest contiguous group of massive, fancy houses I've ever seen), passed Texas Motor Speedway (a NASCAR track), then headed towards a couple of yet unvisited counties just west of DFW. Another successful and very distinct confluence "adventure" compared to others we've had — urbanized ones are pretty unique!