The drive from New York City to Westport, Connecticut to visit our grandparents took one of two routes: the Connecticut Turnpike or the Merritt Parkway. Though comparable in distance and time, the drives were dramatically different.
The Connecticut Turnpike is part of the US interstate highway system and looks like most interstates: multi-lane, fairly straight, high overpasses, land cleared on either side. It primary objective to get you from Point A to Point B achieved.
The Merritt Parkway predates the interstate and is different in many ways: two-lanes in each direction, architecturally interesting overpasses, trees sometimes creating a canopy over the highway. Even as a child, I found it a more pleasant route to take (though I doubt I could elucidate why).
A very important difference – at least for Mom – is that the Connecticut Turnpike was lit and the Merritt Parkway was not. She did not like driving on unlit highways, so her preference was the Connecticut Turnpike if we started home after dusk.
The irony is she moved to rural Iowa where the vast majority of roads are unlit, which she successfully drove for over fifty years without major incident (other than the occasional run-in with a deer, a very common experience). Unfortunately, she no longer has to suffer these unlit roads.
