If I’m reading you right, the shelters are school bus stops. I looked for a pic, but couldn’t find one to link to.
It’s strange, because those same shelters are nonexistent in New York and Ohio. In PA, they all seem to share a standardized design; a lean-to with three solid walls and a completely exposed front.
I 25 never enters Texas. I 40 runs east west though New Mexico and Texas.
Oh yeah I can tell, once you leave Arkansas the roads improve and the construction stops. Unless you are headed into Memphis, then the construction gets worse. 
The deer quit jumping into your car as well.
I meant I-10. I-25 merges into I-10 in Las Cruces and continues south for a bit, before heading east into the Big Empty.
When I lived in NJ I’d cross into PA on I-95 all the time, and hardly noticed a difference. In California I cross into Nevada around Lake Tahoe, and the difference is a crapload of casinos right on the border. Hard to miss that.
In California, you can you’ve crossed county lines by road conditions - Alameda is a lot better than Santa Clara, on I880 at least. In NJ I could tell township boundaries by how well they did snow removal.