Our New Favorite Route Through NYC

I grew up in Massachusetts and it's always great to be back. Getting here from NJ is not always pleasant, though, because the route goes right through New York City. There are so many aggressive drivers and a lot of roads that a big rig cannot safely or legally drive on. We have tried a number of routes and I think we finally found the one to stick with.

One thing you should not do is to follow your GPS. Now, to clarify that statement, I want to go on record to say that we do follow GPS when traveling in the west, where there just aren't a lot of options for it to mess up. But not going through New York. You may not know that north of Interchange 105 the Garden State Parkway in NJ is off-limits to any vehicle with a registered gross vehicle weight above 7,000 pounds. And in New York, RVs are not allowed on any road called a parkway. To add to those restrictions, we avoid the George Washington Bridge (even in a car, usually)  because of the horrendous traffic and aggressive drivers that make the trip a nightmare.

Fortunately, however, our son in law is a commercial trucker, so we asked him what route he takes through NYC if heading towards or through Hartford, CT. This is the route that he uses when driving a tractor-trailer:

Take the NJ Turnpike north to Rte 80W
Stay right to 80 W Local
Stay right for 17 N (exit 64A)
Stay on 17 N about 15 miles until exiting onto 287 N
287 N to 87 N
87 N to 84 E (exit 17)
Cross the Hudson River on 84 (Newburgh-Beacon Bridge)
Continue on 84 into Hartford

We liked this route. Traffic kept moving pretty much the whole way and we estimated this route is only about 30 miles longer than going over the George Washington Bridge. This is the way you would go if driving to the Military Academy at West Point and we realized as we were seeing familiar sights that we had taken this route when visiting our nephew, Nick, when he was a cadet there.

I did keep our Good Sam Trucker GPS on the whole way but with the sound off. "Sam" kept trying to change the way we were heading until we approached the bridge on 84, and from there she was fine with our direction. As a point of interest, she had wanted us to go over the George Washington Bridge so we were happy to have our own route.

The rest of our journey was uneventful and we were happy to pull into our site for the next week. We will be visiting family and friends while here in MA. Good times ahead!