Traveling to Tennessee vs. Traveling Home

This past weekend I was in Brentwood Tennessee for the Quitter Conference.  My travels on the way down were markably different than my travels on the way home.

When I was getting prepared for the trip, I put into Google Maps my location and where I was headed.  For options, I selected "no tolls".  It had me going through Chicago on a straight south direction.  Some of the roads were not interstate but I was okay with that.  I wrote out my directions onto a piece of paper and brought it along.  For the first few hours of the trip, I knew where I was going and didn't consult my scribbles.

When I went through Chicago, I went onto highway 41 and I was surprised at how bumpy the road was.  There were also traffic lights on this route.  Eventually I got up on interstate 90 and 94 but even at 7:30 PM on a Thursday night, there was a traffic jam in downtown Chicago.  I could not believe the number of people on the roads at that hour.

As I went further on my trip, I stubbornly stayed to my written plan from Google Maps.  I remember getting lost at least three times where I had to double back and take a different direction to get back on track.  One time, I made a mistake and didn't take the left like I had written and ended up on some very narrow, very bumpy farm roads.  This was on the Illinois and Indiana boarder.  I really felt like I was wasting time.  I tried to breath and relax and recalculated my estimated time that I would arrive.

Getting to Brentwood was probably 13 hours.  But getting home was less as I didn't consult my notes and went interstate really most of the way.  It can also be scenic with needed rest stops.  When you are driving by yourself, without a navigator, it is also probably the safest.

I should have used the GPS on this trip for both ways as it would have saved me time and aggravation.  Google Maps wasn't wrong in the directions they gave me.  Their directions just involved so many smaller highways with numbers and places I wasn't familiar with that it wasn't the best choice.