tom tom trickery

Essex - Charlotte Ferry / Essex, New York
Yesterday afternoon we drove up to Burlington, Vermont. I've been several times so I was fairly confident in knowing the way but we had the Tom Tom GPS navigation system running nonetheless. Zooming up the Northway, north of Albany, I came to the exit where I usually veer off and head northeast towards Vermont. But my buddy Tom Tom strongly encouraged me to stay straight ahead on the Northway another 130 or so miles. I didn't really think much about it at the time because I've always been amazed when it takes me on short-cuts, etc that I'd otherwise never have discovered. After several more hours of driving, I began to get a bit fidgety knowing that there was a large lake called Champlain between us and where we wanted to be. And then - the large lake was suddenly 15 feet from the front bumper. It had brought us to a ferry crossing without ever asking us if we indeed WANTED to use a ferry. What if the ferry had not been running - we would have had to reverse direction and easily add another 3-4 hours onto our drive. Fortunately, we made the 6:30PM ferry. Humorously, in gabbing with other carloads crossing with us, the majority had also trusted their GPS system and ended up in the same predicament. Ah ha! Tom Tom went for the trick instead of the treat.