Often, Google maps doesn't work fast enough or is too complicated to use while driving, but on the way home from NEPA yesterday, it worked BEAUTIFULLY.
Route 81 is under construction in the vicinity of Pine Grove and Ravine. It's closed in one direction and traffic shares one side of the highway (a single lane in each direction for about 25 miles or so.) On the way up on Friday, there was an accident along this stretch and we got stuck at a standstill between jersey barriers for about 45 minutes while the wreck was cleared.
So we already knew traffic was heavy and this was a bottle neck on the way back home. As we approached 209 from the north, traffic slowed down to a crawl. I pulled up Google maps and saw traffic was mostly black with bits of red here and there for about 20 miles on 81. We had a hundred yards or so until the exit onto 209. (I highlighted the section of 81 on the map below where there was traffic.)
I asked my wife to enter in our home address into Google, and let it direct us home. It told us to take that 209 exit and get onto 325 South.
Let me tell you. 325 south is absolutely spectacular. It is straight as an arrow and the road surface is smoother than 81 and there is zero traffic on it. For 25 miles I barely had to move the steering wheel at all. And I was going faster on 325 than I had been going on 81 before the traffic jam. It's a beautiful road. Goes right through state hunting land next to a reservoir. Scenic and fast and ZERO traffic. Yeah baby.
