We did not decide to take Skargo, our S2K, until the morning we left. It had been raining for the past several days and early weather reports promised more of the same. Monday morning the sun was shining when I went outside to get the paper. I checked out the regional radar and it looked like it was a go for a road trip with the S2000. My wife had to go to Montreal for a meeting and I decided to drive up with her. This was going to be the longest trip we had yet taken in the little car. We packed the softside luggage and got everything we needed into the trunk. One of the bags, a Red Oxx Flying Boxcar, was a perfect fit into the well (www.redoxx.com).

This was also going to be our first long trip using the Nuvi 350 for naviagation. I normally use a Garmin GPSMap76CS and lay out my route on the computer first. The Nuvi does not let you lay out a route on a PC but I liked the larger screen and voice prompts and wanted to try it on a longer trip. I created locations, waypoints, on the Nuvi for the hotel we were going to stay at and for the office my wife would be going to her meetings. I had Nuvi lay out a route to see which way it would want to take us. What it wanted to do was not where I wanted to drive. I made another waypoint that would take us over the Kancamagus Highway (http://www.byways.org/browse/byways/2458/index.html). The Nuvi allows the user to insert one waypoint on a route and the one on the Kanc was enough to take us over the route we wanted over the Kanc and then through Franconia Notch.

Got the car packed, lowered the top and we were on our way. As we were traveling over the Kanc my wife beat us up for being on a perfect picnic highway and not having any sandwiches. A few miles of the Kanc was under construction. We had to spend some time waiting for one way traffic and then a slow drive over a unpaved road surface. We were behind an RV after the construction. As soon as we had a safe passing area it was VTEC time -downshift to second, VTEC, 9K, upshift to third and bye bye RV.

We had a good drive through the mountains of New Hampshire and Vermont. As we got further north it started getting colder. We did not want to put up the top so, we put on another layer. When we got to the border and were waiting to cross, I switched the display to metric

 

Nice report.

We took our S on the "Kanc" as you call it two years ago. It's a great road, and when the foliage is just right, a beautiful road.

For those not familiar Kancamagus Highway

 

Being a country boy driving in Montreal makes me nuts.
Nice write up, sounds like your trip was lots of fun.
Levi

 

Great post!! I really enjoyed reading about your trip. Sounds like you had one of those gps experiences that I often have with my Garmin. +1 and I entertain ourselves by imagining what the thing would like to be saying instead of saying in her clipped British accent, "Off-Route, Recalculating". I'm sure it'd be a lot more interesting if a bored American flunky had recorded it, "off route you stupid jerk dumba**, now I've got to figure out how to get your stupid a** home. Didn't you hear what I said, you ignorant butthead? or . . . turn left at the next motor vehicle licensing bureau and surrender your license. You have no business driving."

 

Thanks for this report. I would never buy the Nuvi. It takes you to Canada!