After a full morning of packing and ensuring that the house and our plants would be taken care of, we enjoyed a brief nap and some m00dles for lunch before heading out in the new m00se-mobile around 3:30pm.
The ride was fortunately mostly uneventful, and Rich took the opportunity to learn more about some of the new features of his car, like the adaptive cruise control (which works really well!). Everything went smoothly through Pennsylvania and New York but when we hit Connecticut, the situation changed. Nearing “the Burys” on I-84, traffic began to accumulate and then just stopped. One of the typically less-than-informative electronic signs along the highway indicated heavy traffic delays between Exits 17-21 and that the time to travel 6 miles was 30 minutes.
It turned out that the delays stretched as far as Exit 25, and it took us around an hour to get through it. This was also the first time we were using our integrated navigation system and so far we’re giving it mixed reviews. It routed us through Middlebury and Waterbury at one point before putting us back on I-84, a route which did save us some time and definitely some frustration. But a few of the other detours were less helpful.
In any case, the traffic situation eventually abated and we were back on track and heading to Rein’s Deli, just about an hour later than expected. We arrived there around 7:40pm and enjoyed a snack of a toasted bagel with chive cream cheese and a sandwich of corned beef on rye. And we made dad jealous via Google Hangouts as he he’d had only tuna salad for supper at home.
Our next “adventure” occurred along I-290 in Massachusetts. The ramp we were supposed to take to access I-495 was closed (construction again) and the detour sign indicating the direction of the detour was posted just beyond where you would actually have to exit, so we (along with at least half a dozen other people) missed it. We ended up on Route 85 near Hudson. The nav system was trying to turn us around, probably to put us on I-495, but with entrance and exit ramps closed it was impossible to know whether that route would even work. So we stayed on Route 85 north to Hudson and then took Route 62 west to intersect with I-495 north, and we were again on our way. In looking at the map afterward, I suspect that the “detour” actually sends traffic southbound on I-495 to the next exit, and then reroutes it northbound. Talk about frustrating, especially when the next exit is ten miles away. This is the kind of trap that we were caught in the last few years on our journey, although not in this same spot. So maybe our accidental detour worked out for the best anyway.
Traffic thinned considerably as the night went on (although I don’t know what the crazy caravan of chicken trucks was doing along I-95 so late) and we were at the usual rest area just after 11:30pm. It was a warm and stuffy night for sleeping but we both were comfortable and ultimately got a good amount of rest.