Planning a Road Trip? --- Be Aware of Road Constructions!

Recently we did a weekend road trip to Lake Superior. The driving up there was supposed to take roughly 2.5 hours, but we ended up spending over 5 hours on the road. Why? The road constructions that we were unaware of. 

Because of this expected development, we had to change our entire plan. The original plan was to arrive there in the early morning, spend the entire day at the destination, and then drive back in the late afternoon. Because of the road constructions, we had to spend one night there.

The strange thing was, google map did not pick up the road construction at all, and we solely relied on it. You can imagine the constant rerouting while driving there.

After this incident, I realized that the arrival time on Google maps or GPSs may not be reliable all the time. I did some research on how to find out if there is road construction on certain roads.

The U.S. Department of Transportation has a website that gives detailed construction and traffic information nationwide. From there, you can click the state you are interested to check out. Once you click a state on the map, you can find links to see the state traffic information. These links will lead you to the state traffic website eventually. From the state traffic website, you will get detailed information on road constructions, lane closures, and etc.

Hopefully we can estimate our travel time better next time with this additional information.