Route 1, Day One

At 7:29 a.m. on Tuesday, Dec 29, we leave Annie and Shawn at the curb of Terminal A at Logan Airport. US Route 1 crosses the Tobin Bridge just north of Boston proper and near the airport it is combined with I-93, which has come from northern New Hampshire. South of Boston I-93 ends, and shortly afterwards Route 1 peels off I-95. We pass the “Auto Mile” in Norwood, where car dealerships line the road, and see our first pre-Holiday Inn, mid-century motel: a long, low-slung building with parking in front of each of about ten to fifteen units’ doors. I expect to see many more as we travel.
With Jim napping (short night for us), I drive across a bridge into Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and face its Public Library, an imposing monument to learning.





I take a right at a fork in the road and drive many miles before I realize I've lost Route 1. Hoping to recover without disturbing Jim’s sleep, I carry on. I finally find I-295, which junctions with Route 1 but again guess the wrong direction. When I realize my mistake I have to backtrack all the way to Attleboro, Massachusetts. Jim wakes up and is surprised we aren’t farther along, so I admit I’ve driven in a huge circle for the past hour. When we arrive again at the fatal fork in the road for the second time, I go left and promptly lose Route 1 again. Jim navigates with the GPS, we wander around, and eventually find Route 1. I’m still not sure how I lost it, but trust me, Route 1 South in northeastern Rhode Island is hard to follow.
  The drive south of Providence is lovely. We drive through the charming town center of Westerly, founded in 1669. It reminds me of West Hartford, Connecticut: one and two story shops line the road. We drive near the Atlantic Ocean, though we never see it, just highway signs for various beaches.
Connecticut surprises me: two lane roads through woods and villages. There are areas of car dealerships and big box stores, but also small town centers. For mile after mile there are echoes of the old Boston Post Road: street signs, business names, even an apartment complex named “Boston Commons”.

We had foolishly thought we’d arrive at Peter’s and Xiomara’s around noon, taking 4 ½ or 5 hours to cover what is 3 ½ miles via interstate. Silly us! We arrived around 7 p.m: eleven and a half hours on the road, stopping only once for gas and once for take-out food to share from La Cuisine in Branford.
Before we get to the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx, where Peter and Xiomara live, we drive on Boston Avenue; what’s that doing in the Bronx? It’s all part of the Boston Post Road, established back when the Bronx was forest. It looks very much like many other commercial districts in New York City: block after block of city street storefronts.

When we arrive at Peter’s and Xiomara’s around 7 p.m. I make an executive decision. Instead of backtracking east through many busy Bronx city streets to return to the exact block where we left Route 1, in order to drive on every yard of the highway, we head directly south on the Henry Hudson Parkway, rejoining Route 1 as it (and I-95) cross the George Washington Bridge into New Jersey. It’s 9:40 p.m. and we still have two hours of driving to reach the Princeton Inn, where I had made reservations several hours earlier. Let’s just consider it ‘alternate’ Route 1.

The trip down Route 1 and 9 is very familiar. It parallels the New Jersey Turnpike, so I’ve seen this territory many times over the years, both as a youthful resident and on countless drives from New England to New Jersey and south. The most distinctive feature is the vistas: I see downtown Newark off in the distance, and can see miles of city lights. We arrive in Princeton around midnight, happy to fall into bed after a very long day.