Have you ever met anyone who enjoys driving on the New Jersey Turnpike? If you have, I fear that person and myself might not agree on much in life. While I will admit the NJ Turnpike serves an important function — a function I suppose it serves successfully — I quiver any time I know I need to drive on that particular highway.

Anyone reading this blog who is not familiar with the NJ Turnpike, be thankful! In my opinion, that roadway alone gives New Jersey a bad reputation, but I do hear the state is quite beautiful. However, from girlhood through adulthood, the majority of my experiences in the state have been on the turnpike. Those experiences have consisted of wrong exits, lingering stenches from the garbage dumps located between New Jersey and New York and hours of endless traffic (particularly on car trips between New York and Washington, D.C. en route to visit relatives). Needless to say, New Jersey is not my favorite state.

During my time at Global Traveler, I have tended to use NJ Transit when traveling through New Jersey, either to Newark for flights or sales calls or to Trenton, on my way to headquarters in Yardley, Penn. Yesterday, instead of taking the train, I had the use of a car and opted to use it to get from Manhattan to Newark. This is typically a 20-25 minute drive. Getting out of the city was easy enough; I went right on through the Lincoln Tunnel. Then disaster struck. I did my best to follow the signs, but the distances between the signs never allowed me enough time to make my exit. Maybe it is the (sometimes) four to six lanes of traffic you have to traverse if you are unfamiliar with the road signs. So, in the end, a 25-minute trip ended up taking an hour. The return to Manhattan was, thankfully, much smoother, but I still missed my exit to the Lincoln Tunnel. The exit appeared immediately after the sign, so I opted for the Holland Tunnel. New York City never looked so good!

Now, I understand that if I drove more, I would be more familiar with the exits and my mistakes yesterday would be eliminated, but the road could be a bit more user-friendly for newcomers. And the endless hours of traffic and garbage odors will not be going away any time soon. Let’s just say, I thank my lucky stars for accessible trains and planes when traveling up and down the East Coast.

— Alex Young, vice president and associate publisher