Travelogue, Road Trip, National Parks

Road Trip 2021: Day 1 — Surviving the nightmare

Misdirection by Google Maps almost strands us

P. Venkat Raman
Taking Off
Published in
3 min readFeb 11, 2022

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We didn’t even have all this green! (Photo courtesy of MemoryCatcher on Pixabay)

This is an account of what happened on the very first day as we embarked on our 11-day southwestern road trip in December 2021. Check this post for an overview of the full trip.

The First Day: Fremont, CA to Indio, CA

Our simple plan for Day 1 (Map courtesy of Google)

We planned this segment from Fremont to Indio as a simple, boring, long stretch of freeway driving that was expected to be uneventful. Of course, that was not to be!

As we were cruising along on I-5, Google Maps reported a slowdown on the freeway due to an accident that would delay us by 30 minutes. It offered us an alternate route. And we took that alternate route. Big mistake.

Road Trip Snafu #1

While the alternate was just a little slower in speed, it was really smooth sailing, up to a point. That is until we got to the onramp that would get us back on I-5. Only, that onramp from Twisselman Road was closed, presumably for road construction! How could…

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P. Venkat Raman
Taking Off

A tortoise among internet marketing hares. Slowly inching toward the goal.