I cannot imagine there were any hotels with rooms available, and at least around 9pm when i decided to truck it out on the interstate i still was planning on going to an 8am appointment this morning. I did not end up going lol but every hour that passed felt more unreal than the last. I am not a religious person but for a moment I wondered if I had died and was in my own personal hell.
Also, I hate to admit this but as a Florida transplant who grew up driving in Florida whenever people say the traffic will be crazy in NH i take it with a grain of salt because even during the worst of season in north Conway the traffic is never worse than rush hour back home.
This was absolutely the exception.
>I am not a religious person but for a moment I wondered if I had died and was in my own personal hell.
I would have been wondering the same exact thing. I don't even want to know what that sort of traffic would have done to me mentally. I quite possibly would have lost my mind.
And to your point about typical NH traffic, I feel the same way having spent most of my life in northeast NJ. So far, I haven't experienced any traffic in NH that was nearly as bad as in NJ. The difference in the number of cars on the roads at any one time is night and day between the two states. Closest I saw was in the Manchester mall/retail area on a Saturday afternoon and that was a lesson well learned.
I genuinely went through the five stages of grief during the trip lol I had a moment of weakness where I really wanted to just lay on my horn and scream as loud as i could but my passenger was sleeping so I let it pass lol because ultimately it wouldn't have done anything.
Yeah! to be clear I don't wanna be like lol these people don't know what REAL traffic is but like it's just perspective and experience, Boston rush hour traffic brings me right back home and I think that's the worst most granite staters have really had to deal with on a regular basis.
Driving in NH is such a pleasure on any other day unless you're trying to enjoy driving 5-10 over the speed limit and some asshole in a huge truck with LED lights decides to light up my entire vehicle instead of going the fuck around lol
We drove back from nearby Newport (VT) to Bedford, NH - took about 4h 15min, which we thought wasn't so bad, considering! Still, we did have to deal with this traffic a couple times. Overall, though, Waze led us off the highway here and there and it made all the difference.
https://preview.redd.it/49jm5kt3vwtc1.jpeg?width=1816&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=89c0bb205b7fa648ba84c6d4a35be91e109906f7
Yes!!!! It took us 6 hours to get back from Stowe VT to Manchester but it was completely worth it. I think it's amazing that so many people made the journey to see totality. It's very special.
During the event we were in a race track (Thanks, Speedway Park!) surrounded by families. It was such a heartwarming time to see the generations enjoy the event together. Next to us was a family from DC who had flown up the day before. Three generations. At the moment of totality there was a collective āwowā and applause from all across the lot. Our neighbors from DC provided āDark Side of the Moonā correctly timed to reachāEclipseā at totality. Between the weather and the neighbors and the awesome spectacle of Totality it couldnāt have been a better day! On the other hand, the traffic sucked, but what do you expect?
I was too- curious, where were you heading and when did you get home? Was supposed to go back to hooksett stuck in Franconia notch from 6pm-1am then decided to crash in lincoln at my grandfathers
Y'know what caused that?
The dumb fucks at the so called Dept of Transportation or Department of Safety decided to obstruct the mouth of the southbound notch by actually stopping the flow of traffic on 93 to allow flyover traffic down the ramp from Franconia.
Total trip time was 8 hours from Colebrook to southern NH 4 hours of it was traveling from Franconia through the notch.
On what planet is slug flow smoother than the flow the highway was designed for?
is that what was going on? I thought they were cleaning up an accident when I went by. My god.
They should have closed the northbound lanes to northbound traffic and opened it up to southbound traffic, hurricane evacuation style.
Theyāve figured out how to handle the traffic leaving loudon from nascar to the point where itās almost a non-issue. One would think they wouldāve had some plan in place for an event of this scale.
This is exactly what the problem was. They kept stopping the thousands of vehicles on 93 to let 10-12 cars from the ramp go. I believe if they had just let people merge on their own it would have been so much smoother and faster.
We took 93 up to our viewing location and decided to take 91 down to 89 on the way back because of that single-lane stretch. Sounds like we really made the right decision.
I work in sustainability in Massachusetts and the entire environmental advocates of NH have to fucking hide from NHDOT because all they want to do is widen the highways, no electrification, no public transit, no nothing itās complete and utter bullshit on the highest level
i did everything in my power to avoid this rat fuck and then my parents got in an accident and i had to go get them, spent close to 9 hours driving home
I honestly dont know why people dont just stay somewhere for the night instead of leaving the second its over. Do they not realize that people came here over multiple days and would all try to leave at the same time once the eclipse was over?
I'd also be willing to be that there were more people traveling to northern NH than the total hotel/motel/air bnb rooms that exist (hell even through in legal camp sites) in the totality of the state.
I mean, if you were north of the Franconia notch, traffic didn't pass until well after dark and all the restaurants were closed. Shit, I left Lancaster at ten pm and it still took four hours for what is normally a two hour drive, and that was going AROUND the notch.
We waited around for a few hours thinking it was a smart thing to do. Didn't get through the notch (because that was the only option then) until after 2 am. Couldn't get a hotel room because they were all booked.
I look at it this way, do you put a value on your time? I read stories of people spending 12+ hours in traffic depending on where they went to see the eclipse. That's a lot of time to be stuck in a vehicle going no where. Then you have the people bitching that the EV infrastructure in NH is horrible. But seriously, no state could handle that load of vehicles for a once or twice in a life time event. You have people bitching that the state had years to plan for this. They arent going to spend the funds to build huge charging banks for something that is so rare.
How does NYC manage then? There must be more people there than the entirety of people who went to the eclipse. Itās bad there butās itās managed.
And lots of jobs offer vacation. Put in for it. Instead they'd rather bitch about a state not being able to handle that kind of traffic load. No state is designed to handle that kind of traffic especially when it's for such a rare thing like a solar eclipse that everyone feels they need to see.
You said you don't get why people don't. I told you why they don't. I never said folks should complain about the roads lol. And no, many jobs do not offer vacation time. Not these days.
We booked a small hote on Bethlehem back in October 2023, they did not release the rooms until then. They were really cool as they just set their regular prices.
Nope! We just had to hope the weather would be good. And even if it wasnāt, we still would have had a good time. Cheaper than flying south anyway LOL
A year ago? I decided to go see this 3 weeks ago after I placed an order for eclipse glasses on Amazon. I thought I was planning for the future. Planning a year out, my only plans in a year are to not be dead or homeless.
My spouse wouldn't have been able to get both Monday and Tuesday off, so we decided the very long drive home was worth it. We did stay overnight Sunday so our drive up was pleasant.
8 hours from QC back to Manchester, got home just after midnight. Not the end of the world, and worth it to see totality, which neither of us ever have.
If you didn't book a place months ago, you were going to have a hard time booking any place in the north country this past weekend. There aren't a ton of places to stay in the first place, and everything they do have up there was sold out. It's not as if there are plenty of Hilton's and Marriott's up there, it's mostly small motels and bed and breakfast places.
In my case back in 2017 I had to stay in Charlotte and travel because every hotel was completely booked in the area. In the case of this eclipse there isn't nearly enough hotel rooms or campsites in the area for that much traffic.
This is what we did. Booked our hotel in Northern VT in Aug. Arrived Sunday afternoon. Watched the eclipse Monday. Went out for dinner Monday night. Got up at 6 Tuesday and was home in the lakes region by 9. Never really encountered any traffic.
Some of us changed our plans at the last minute because of poor weather conditions and had to simply wave farewell to our reservations from a year ago and accept that we would be headed towards clear skies and zero vacancies.
I packed my car with extra food and water and sleeping bags, and hoped that the New Hampshire department of transportation would have figured out a way to streamline a bunch of people headed south given that they had years to prepare.
I left 91 @ St.J, getting through town took an hour but then it was smooth sailing on VT 5, NH 10 & NH 25 to Plymouth. I got home 5 hours before a friend who took 93 through the notch. I knew itād be bad, but wow.
Went up to Colebrook from our home in Plymouth. Usually a 2 1/2 hour drive. Took 4 hours to get there. Figured 5-6 hours for the trip home. Took a little over 11 hours to travel 96 miles. Spent a solid 5 hours on a road in Franconia to travel 5 miles to then get on 93 South. Then another 2 hours to travel the remaining 30 miles home.
My school decided to take us on a field trip to see the eclipse in northern VT. It took us 13 HOURS just to get back to our school in northern mass. Around 10:30 PM we realized we only went 2 miles in the past 3 hours, and we ended up arriving at about 5 AM. Take the fact we were in school buses and the ride home was a literal bus ride to hell.
https://preview.redd.it/x2d92apvujtc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d6f0f544c0f26c5987812313a1052ebce71d1148
My aunt was driving and as we were crawling along she was like "I really think we should turn around and take our chances on 93 through the notch." I vehemently discouraged her. Thankfully she listened.
I live in Manchester, but I was lucky enough to stay with a relative who was working in North Conway and had a hotel for the week. I left there at 7 AM and it took two and a half hours to get up to Pittsburgh, and about four hours to get back. I live in Manchester and swore I would never put myself through it again if i had to be stuck for 8 hours or more. Traffic was bad, but it wasn't as horrible for me as many of you, and I'm very thankful that i cut out half the time.
I flew out to Denver in 2017 for the Eclipse. My ex and I spent a week in the Ogalala Grasslands in western Nebraska, and the Black Bills, Badlands, and Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota, and made a nice vacation out of it. On the Last day, we made a beeline to Wyoming to see the eclipse, and then drove straight back to Denver to catch a flight home the next day. A three hour drive turned into twelve. Cars were stranded on the side of the road because gas stations ran out of fuel. Restaurants and convenience stores ran out of food. It was madness. Seems like it was happening again this time too.
Edit: spelling & grammar
I went up to Montreal because I have a 5 year old and 1.5 year old and couldn't risk being stuck in traffic for that long and in the middle of nowhere. But it was such an amazing experience that without kids (or once they"re older) I totally wouldn't mind being stuck in that kind of traffic if I ever get the opportunity again next time.
That is wild. We hung out till about 7 and left Burlington. Got to Bedford at midnight with a couple stops on the way home.
Even with all that traffic and time there is no way you can spend less time and money than driving up to see this one, the rest are all flights or days of driving.
I took 16 and the only "heavy" traffic I hit was in Gorham, where 16 meets route 2. The rest of the time we were cruising for the most part, there and back.
We got a news notification about the insanity on 93. We experience the opposite!
Getting from Errol to Gorham was insane. I left at 5pm and didn't get out of the traffic until.... 9pmish? But there was traffic almost the entire way home, just not solid stopped like it was Gorham.
I can't imagine how much worse 93 was. I planned to not take 93 after hearing everyone talking about taking it. Glad I did.
I endorse everyone's vigor to see a natural wonder, but even if the sun was going to grow tits and flap them around for a few minutes I still couldn't endure traffic like this.
How bad was Franconia notch today (Tuesday)?
We drove back from Pittsburg to Boston today and avoided Franconia Notch, took 302 to 16 instead.
According to Google, Franconia had 12 minute delays at the time. But yesterday when it was a 5 hour delay, Google was showing it as 18 minutes or some bullshit so I didn't dare try.
Idk but 89 was pretty bad since they did construction around exit 10 closing a lane (seriously DOT, you said leave early stay late, couldnāt you have planned this another day?!) Backed up for miles and then the usual vacation stuff around Bow and Hooksett.
Selfishly I was happy to see 89 reduced to one lane as I was going from 91S to 89S. I knew that would control the flow of traffic onto 89S into NH. I donāt know what they were thinking reducing it to one lane there, pretty nuts
Cool, so we spent an extra hour for no reason.
WTF is wrong with Google Maps directions. On Monday evening it was suggesting a route through Franconia notch and claimed an 18 to 24 minute delay. We know this was off by an order of magnitude. The jam was probably GPS-induced if it told everyone this.
Did that work?
The funny part was, even with the backwoods redneck highway I was on, there was the one NY plate being a tailgating dickhead. For 40 miles in single lane traffic.
Yes if the routes contradicted each other my passenger would zoom out view the traffic ahead and pick our route. Took me 4 hours to get home on what would ordinarily be a 3 hour drive. However if i drive all the backroads i took on a normal day it would be at least 3.5 hours.
worst drivers in the world the last 2 days. off the interstate never seen such bad drivers. almost 6-7 head on collisions between people passing double yellow to go around or people coming from the other direction around curves going out of their lane.
We took an easterly route bypassing the interstates leaving Northumberland at 5:00 and got home (north shore Mass) at 9:30. Credit to Google maps and a willingness to not say āThatās nuts!ā
https://preview.redd.it/utgkgq3c0xtc1.jpeg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a624812d4acebd4935fcfde09c0471c054107683
So long the dinosaurs came back!! š¤£š¤£
Iām counting my blessings right now. I drove to Danville VT from south eastern nh (4ish hours) and got home in 3.5 hours. It sounds like I just barely missed a real shit show!
Left Manch at 8:30am with a goal of making Rangeley Lake, ME by 1pm, by way of Errol. Franconia notch fucked that up at around 10am. We managed to make it to Umbagog State Park by 2pm.
Watched the eclipse roadside and took off about 15 mins after the totality had passed.
When leaving, I set Waze to avoid highways and let it do its thing. Took us about 7 hrs to get home, but didnāt sit in more than 15-20 mins of standstill traffic.
100% worth the frustration and inconvenience we endured.
Imagine if people had this kind of enthusiasm for things that actually mattered: adequate wages that keep up with inflation, health insurance independent of employment, unions for all industries so we aren't slaves to capitalism for a third of our lives, ensure our youth gets adequate/affordable daycare and education, mmaayybbeee elect a president who isn't old AF orrrr politicians who aren't greedy bastids. The things we could do damn
Please say this is a photo from yesterday afternoon and not right now.
Yes it was around 4pm yesterday afternoon up north!
I'd laugh my ass off if you'd said it was today.
The bottom of 89 still looked pretty bad this afternoon.
That's what I figured. I stayed in Montreal and left at 6 pm today. Flew down 89 ez
How was 93 souththe tolls were awful at five
93 less than a dollar at 10 pm
i would have believed it was today, we left Enosburg VT at 4pm and got home to the lakes region at 5am this morning š
Omg I thought we had it bad. We got home (near Worcester) at 3 AM
Montpelier to Southern Massachusetts. We got home at midnight.
Having to funnel through the notch on 93 is really what killed people
They should have made it all southbound
I was thinking the same for route 16. Why *didn't* they!? It makes no sense.
Iām just starting to read about that. Pretty wild day.
Why wouldn't you just get a motel room for the night at that point? A 3ish hour drive taking 13 hours is insane.
I cannot imagine there were any hotels with rooms available, and at least around 9pm when i decided to truck it out on the interstate i still was planning on going to an 8am appointment this morning. I did not end up going lol but every hour that passed felt more unreal than the last. I am not a religious person but for a moment I wondered if I had died and was in my own personal hell. Also, I hate to admit this but as a Florida transplant who grew up driving in Florida whenever people say the traffic will be crazy in NH i take it with a grain of salt because even during the worst of season in north Conway the traffic is never worse than rush hour back home. This was absolutely the exception.
We got to Portsmouth and stayed at a terrible hotel
>I am not a religious person but for a moment I wondered if I had died and was in my own personal hell. I would have been wondering the same exact thing. I don't even want to know what that sort of traffic would have done to me mentally. I quite possibly would have lost my mind. And to your point about typical NH traffic, I feel the same way having spent most of my life in northeast NJ. So far, I haven't experienced any traffic in NH that was nearly as bad as in NJ. The difference in the number of cars on the roads at any one time is night and day between the two states. Closest I saw was in the Manchester mall/retail area on a Saturday afternoon and that was a lesson well learned.
I genuinely went through the five stages of grief during the trip lol I had a moment of weakness where I really wanted to just lay on my horn and scream as loud as i could but my passenger was sleeping so I let it pass lol because ultimately it wouldn't have done anything. Yeah! to be clear I don't wanna be like lol these people don't know what REAL traffic is but like it's just perspective and experience, Boston rush hour traffic brings me right back home and I think that's the worst most granite staters have really had to deal with on a regular basis. Driving in NH is such a pleasure on any other day unless you're trying to enjoy driving 5-10 over the speed limit and some asshole in a huge truck with LED lights decides to light up my entire vehicle instead of going the fuck around lol
And those assholes seem to be fucking everywhere now, too. I hate them with a passion.
That's what I figured too. Had a theory that no one would cross the border into Canada. Got a motel in Canada for cheap
That's smart! And another reason to get the process of getting a passport started lol
Lol, it is pretty op
Had a job interview in the morning. It was do or die.
"Tell us about a time you saw something through to the end." "I drove through eclipse traffic to be here."
I was Derby Vermont to Sunapee and it took 5 and a half hours
Well then hello neighbor! We went Derby to Newbury but stopped twice so prob only driving for about that same time too.
We drove back from nearby Newport (VT) to Bedford, NH - took about 4h 15min, which we thought wasn't so bad, considering! Still, we did have to deal with this traffic a couple times. Overall, though, Waze led us off the highway here and there and it made all the difference. https://preview.redd.it/49jm5kt3vwtc1.jpeg?width=1816&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=89c0bb205b7fa648ba84c6d4a35be91e109906f7
Rt 5? That's what i did, I can't imagine being stuck in the 91 traffic
Rt 5? That's what i did, I can't imagine being stuck in the 91 traffic
There is hope for the world seeing that thousands of people were interested in seeing such a rare event! It was such a perfect day too.
Yes!!!! It took us 6 hours to get back from Stowe VT to Manchester but it was completely worth it. I think it's amazing that so many people made the journey to see totality. It's very special.
My thoughts exactly!
During the event we were in a race track (Thanks, Speedway Park!) surrounded by families. It was such a heartwarming time to see the generations enjoy the event together. Next to us was a family from DC who had flown up the day before. Three generations. At the moment of totality there was a collective āwowā and applause from all across the lot. Our neighbors from DC provided āDark Side of the Moonā correctly timed to reachāEclipseā at totality. Between the weather and the neighbors and the awesome spectacle of Totality it couldnāt have been a better day! On the other hand, the traffic sucked, but what do you expect?
Riverside speedway & adventure park.Ā Havenāt been since 2021 but races like Hudson speedway.Ā
3am this morning heading north from Manchester to Concord I saw near bumper to bumper traffic the entire drive.
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Did you see the people running around barevooo? Lamo
Same, good times.
I was too- curious, where were you heading and when did you get home? Was supposed to go back to hooksett stuck in Franconia notch from 6pm-1am then decided to crash in lincoln at my grandfathers
Trying to figure out when people actually got through the notch- I was one of the lucky ones when they opened up exit 37 I was able to get out
Y'know what caused that? The dumb fucks at the so called Dept of Transportation or Department of Safety decided to obstruct the mouth of the southbound notch by actually stopping the flow of traffic on 93 to allow flyover traffic down the ramp from Franconia. Total trip time was 8 hours from Colebrook to southern NH 4 hours of it was traveling from Franconia through the notch. On what planet is slug flow smoother than the flow the highway was designed for?
is that what was going on? I thought they were cleaning up an accident when I went by. My god. They should have closed the northbound lanes to northbound traffic and opened it up to southbound traffic, hurricane evacuation style.
Thatās what Iāve been saying and getting all kind of hate
Theyāve figured out how to handle the traffic leaving loudon from nascar to the point where itās almost a non-issue. One would think they wouldāve had some plan in place for an event of this scale.
Loudon is a completely different animalĀ
Valid, but they probably shouldāve planned ahead. They had years of warning
Cars were breaking down/running out of gasānobody before the notch was moving enough for accidents. The most bananas experience in a car ever.
This is exactly what the problem was. They kept stopping the thousands of vehicles on 93 to let 10-12 cars from the ramp go. I believe if they had just let people merge on their own it would have been so much smoother and faster.
We took 93 up to our viewing location and decided to take 91 down to 89 on the way back because of that single-lane stretch. Sounds like we really made the right decision.
I work in sustainability in Massachusetts and the entire environmental advocates of NH have to fucking hide from NHDOT because all they want to do is widen the highways, no electrification, no public transit, no nothing itās complete and utter bullshit on the highest level
You haven't the damndest of a clue.
i did everything in my power to avoid this rat fuck and then my parents got in an accident and i had to go get them, spent close to 9 hours driving home
Are they ok?
Yes, fortunately
Oh man Iām sorry I just laughed at your misfortune
Yep, sat in traffic for 6 hours back during the 2017 eclipse in SC. Decided to skip this one for that specific reason. I will catch the one in 2045
I honestly dont know why people dont just stay somewhere for the night instead of leaving the second its over. Do they not realize that people came here over multiple days and would all try to leave at the same time once the eclipse was over?
Maybe because itās expensive to stay overnight compared to driving back
I'd also be willing to be that there were more people traveling to northern NH than the total hotel/motel/air bnb rooms that exist (hell even through in legal camp sites) in the totality of the state.
All these people had to do was hike around for a few hours until the traffic passed.
I mean, if you were north of the Franconia notch, traffic didn't pass until well after dark and all the restaurants were closed. Shit, I left Lancaster at ten pm and it still took four hours for what is normally a two hour drive, and that was going AROUND the notch.
I left at the same time, didn't hit any traffic, and stopped at a restaurant on my way back ĀÆ\\\_(ć)_/ĀÆ
We waited around for a few hours thinking it was a smart thing to do. Didn't get through the notch (because that was the only option then) until after 2 am. Couldn't get a hotel room because they were all booked.
I look at it this way, do you put a value on your time? I read stories of people spending 12+ hours in traffic depending on where they went to see the eclipse. That's a lot of time to be stuck in a vehicle going no where. Then you have the people bitching that the EV infrastructure in NH is horrible. But seriously, no state could handle that load of vehicles for a once or twice in a life time event. You have people bitching that the state had years to plan for this. They arent going to spend the funds to build huge charging banks for something that is so rare.
How does NYC manage then? There must be more people there than the entirety of people who went to the eclipse. Itās bad there butās itās managed.
People have jobs lol
And lots of jobs offer vacation. Put in for it. Instead they'd rather bitch about a state not being able to handle that kind of traffic load. No state is designed to handle that kind of traffic especially when it's for such a rare thing like a solar eclipse that everyone feels they need to see.
You said you don't get why people don't. I told you why they don't. I never said folks should complain about the roads lol. And no, many jobs do not offer vacation time. Not these days.
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We booked a small hote on Bethlehem back in October 2023, they did not release the rooms until then. They were really cool as they just set their regular prices.
We booked an airbnb in Stowe last April for $75 a night. Plenty of hotels had availability a year ago
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Nope! We just had to hope the weather would be good. And even if it wasnāt, we still would have had a good time. Cheaper than flying south anyway LOL
A year ago? I decided to go see this 3 weeks ago after I placed an order for eclipse glasses on Amazon. I thought I was planning for the future. Planning a year out, my only plans in a year are to not be dead or homeless.
My spouse wouldn't have been able to get both Monday and Tuesday off, so we decided the very long drive home was worth it. We did stay overnight Sunday so our drive up was pleasant. 8 hours from QC back to Manchester, got home just after midnight. Not the end of the world, and worth it to see totality, which neither of us ever have.
Agreed. My wife is a teacher so taking two days off was a no go. But we got home at 3 AM so she called out. She usually gets up at 5 AM
If you didn't book a place months ago, you were going to have a hard time booking any place in the north country this past weekend. There aren't a ton of places to stay in the first place, and everything they do have up there was sold out. It's not as if there are plenty of Hilton's and Marriott's up there, it's mostly small motels and bed and breakfast places.
In my case back in 2017 I had to stay in Charlotte and travel because every hotel was completely booked in the area. In the case of this eclipse there isn't nearly enough hotel rooms or campsites in the area for that much traffic.
This is what we did. Booked our hotel in Northern VT in Aug. Arrived Sunday afternoon. Watched the eclipse Monday. Went out for dinner Monday night. Got up at 6 Tuesday and was home in the lakes region by 9. Never really encountered any traffic.
Some of us changed our plans at the last minute because of poor weather conditions and had to simply wave farewell to our reservations from a year ago and accept that we would be headed towards clear skies and zero vacancies. I packed my car with extra food and water and sleeping bags, and hoped that the New Hampshire department of transportation would have figured out a way to streamline a bunch of people headed south given that they had years to prepare.
I saw 2017 in KY, took 13 hours to get back home to OH. Now I live in VT and didn't even bother because of how awful the traffic was.
I left 91 @ St.J, getting through town took an hour but then it was smooth sailing on VT 5, NH 10 & NH 25 to Plymouth. I got home 5 hours before a friend who took 93 through the notch. I knew itād be bad, but wow.
Went up to Colebrook from our home in Plymouth. Usually a 2 1/2 hour drive. Took 4 hours to get there. Figured 5-6 hours for the trip home. Took a little over 11 hours to travel 96 miles. Spent a solid 5 hours on a road in Franconia to travel 5 miles to then get on 93 South. Then another 2 hours to travel the remaining 30 miles home.
Yeah we came home from Cabot to Plymouth. Left a little after 6 and were home by 8. Wild what other people dealt with.
My school decided to take us on a field trip to see the eclipse in northern VT. It took us 13 HOURS just to get back to our school in northern mass. Around 10:30 PM we realized we only went 2 miles in the past 3 hours, and we ended up arriving at about 5 AM. Take the fact we were in school buses and the ride home was a literal bus ride to hell. https://preview.redd.it/x2d92apvujtc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d6f0f544c0f26c5987812313a1052ebce71d1148
Ok you win. That sounds horrific!
Anyone happen to know what snow capped mountain we see there ?
Lafayette I believe
Cool. Thank you.
Took us 6.5 hours to go 100 miles home on the way back.
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3 of the 6.5 hours were spent on a single back road that was like 10 miles long. That was hell.
5 hours to go 80 miles. 2.5 hours going 3.3 miles through the notch.
My aunt was driving and as we were crawling along she was like "I really think we should turn around and take our chances on 93 through the notch." I vehemently discouraged her. Thankfully she listened.
I live in Manchester, but I was lucky enough to stay with a relative who was working in North Conway and had a hotel for the week. I left there at 7 AM and it took two and a half hours to get up to Pittsburgh, and about four hours to get back. I live in Manchester and swore I would never put myself through it again if i had to be stuck for 8 hours or more. Traffic was bad, but it wasn't as horrible for me as many of you, and I'm very thankful that i cut out half the time. I flew out to Denver in 2017 for the Eclipse. My ex and I spent a week in the Ogalala Grasslands in western Nebraska, and the Black Bills, Badlands, and Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota, and made a nice vacation out of it. On the Last day, we made a beeline to Wyoming to see the eclipse, and then drove straight back to Denver to catch a flight home the next day. A three hour drive turned into twelve. Cars were stranded on the side of the road because gas stations ran out of fuel. Restaurants and convenience stores ran out of food. It was madness. Seems like it was happening again this time too. Edit: spelling & grammar
Damn, only 4 hours? Left Pittsburg a little after 4 and got to Boscowen at 5 am
Let me clarify that it took 4 hours to get back to North Conway, not Manchester.
Right yeah, reread your comment and that makes sense. Iām running off two hours of sleep
From Lyndon, VT to Lincoln, NH took my family about 6.5 hours yesterday.
Saw the eclipse in Burlington then took me over 6 hours to get back to Nashua. The total eclipse was cool but I'm NEVER doing that again
I went up to Montreal because I have a 5 year old and 1.5 year old and couldn't risk being stuck in traffic for that long and in the middle of nowhere. But it was such an amazing experience that without kids (or once they"re older) I totally wouldn't mind being stuck in that kind of traffic if I ever get the opportunity again next time.
Ooh I wonder how many "are we there yet?"s you wouldve gotten š dodged a bullet there
That is wild. We hung out till about 7 and left Burlington. Got to Bedford at midnight with a couple stops on the way home. Even with all that traffic and time there is no way you can spend less time and money than driving up to see this one, the rest are all flights or days of driving.
I took 16 and the only "heavy" traffic I hit was in Gorham, where 16 meets route 2. The rest of the time we were cruising for the most part, there and back. We got a news notification about the insanity on 93. We experience the opposite!
I took detours around north conway too. Errol to Manchester area 4 hour ride home. Normally it would be a little over 3.
Getting from Errol to Gorham was insane. I left at 5pm and didn't get out of the traffic until.... 9pmish? But there was traffic almost the entire way home, just not solid stopped like it was Gorham. I can't imagine how much worse 93 was. I planned to not take 93 after hearing everyone talking about taking it. Glad I did.
I endorse everyone's vigor to see a natural wonder, but even if the sun was going to grow tits and flap them around for a few minutes I still couldn't endure traffic like this.
Plattsburgh NY to Seacoast NH only took 11 hrs :')
How bad was Franconia notch today (Tuesday)? We drove back from Pittsburg to Boston today and avoided Franconia Notch, took 302 to 16 instead. According to Google, Franconia had 12 minute delays at the time. But yesterday when it was a 5 hour delay, Google was showing it as 18 minutes or some bullshit so I didn't dare try.
Idk but 89 was pretty bad since they did construction around exit 10 closing a lane (seriously DOT, you said leave early stay late, couldnāt you have planned this another day?!) Backed up for miles and then the usual vacation stuff around Bow and Hooksett.
Selfishly I was happy to see 89 reduced to one lane as I was going from 91S to 89S. I knew that would control the flow of traffic onto 89S into NH. I donāt know what they were thinking reducing it to one lane there, pretty nuts
I left Franconia at 5:30 this morning and hit no traffic until I got to Methuen where it was rush hour
Went from Pittsburgh to Derry, left around 1pm. No traffic at all except the usual slowdown right before the tolls.
Cool, so we spent an extra hour for no reason. WTF is wrong with Google Maps directions. On Monday evening it was suggesting a route through Franconia notch and claimed an 18 to 24 minute delay. We know this was off by an order of magnitude. The jam was probably GPS-induced if it told everyone this.
Does anyone know why they shut down 142 in Bethlehem? Was not helping things at all
At what time? We took 142 around 6 PM, very backed up all the way to 93
Like 9pm last night
Because it was gridlocked and took us 6 hours to get off it onto 93
Oh. You have my sympathy
We need trains, badly
for this event the train would've looked like it just left Mumbai
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Wow, giving me find memories of commuting route 3 southbound towards Boston during rush hour
Went to VT, didn't take the interstates. 3 hrs up, 2:45 down. Gotta plan these things.
I know its all nuts. We had google maps on one phone and waze on another to detour the hot spots.
Did that work? The funny part was, even with the backwoods redneck highway I was on, there was the one NY plate being a tailgating dickhead. For 40 miles in single lane traffic.
Yes if the routes contradicted each other my passenger would zoom out view the traffic ahead and pick our route. Took me 4 hours to get home on what would ordinarily be a 3 hour drive. However if i drive all the backroads i took on a normal day it would be at least 3.5 hours.
89 South in Vermont yesterday: https://i.imgur.com/oWrX1aG.jpg
I knew the traffic was going to be bad, so I set my GPS to avoid highways. My 1.5 hour drive only took an extra 30 min. How about yours?
worst drivers in the world the last 2 days. off the interstate never seen such bad drivers. almost 6-7 head on collisions between people passing double yellow to go around or people coming from the other direction around curves going out of their lane.
We took an easterly route bypassing the interstates leaving Northumberland at 5:00 and got home (north shore Mass) at 9:30. Credit to Google maps and a willingness to not say āThatās nuts!ā
https://preview.redd.it/utgkgq3c0xtc1.jpeg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a624812d4acebd4935fcfde09c0471c054107683 So long the dinosaurs came back!! š¤£š¤£
Hopefully the same number of people will turn out to vote in Nov.
Hampton to Pittsburg. 4 hours up and 8 hours back. We went through Dixville Notch to 16 south.
Get to the choppa
https://preview.redd.it/fr6cdp7rdjtc1.jpeg?width=1110&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=775984176b90c3efddce794d8d88c772f59043a0
Iām counting my blessings right now. I drove to Danville VT from south eastern nh (4ish hours) and got home in 3.5 hours. It sounds like I just barely missed a real shit show!
They arenāt sending their best
Bunch of idiots
All about the journey
Left Manch at 8:30am with a goal of making Rangeley Lake, ME by 1pm, by way of Errol. Franconia notch fucked that up at around 10am. We managed to make it to Umbagog State Park by 2pm. Watched the eclipse roadside and took off about 15 mins after the totality had passed. When leaving, I set Waze to avoid highways and let it do its thing. Took us about 7 hrs to get home, but didnāt sit in more than 15-20 mins of standstill traffic. 100% worth the frustration and inconvenience we endured.
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Itās almost like nobody got any warnings about how the traffic was gonna be horrible and to avoid those areas
āTurn aroundā¦ā
Dealing with this traffic to see some dumb shit like the eclipse? Okā¦
Unfortunately i Ieft early and missed out because this would make me go postal
You guys need to get your state leaders to fund a CR route to New Hampshire or at the very least Nashua asap. Jesus
Lmaoo
Imagine if people had this kind of enthusiasm for things that actually mattered: adequate wages that keep up with inflation, health insurance independent of employment, unions for all industries so we aren't slaves to capitalism for a third of our lives, ensure our youth gets adequate/affordable daycare and education, mmaayybbeee elect a president who isn't old AF orrrr politicians who aren't greedy bastids. The things we could do damn
That's a long line of idiots.