HAHA, its “Drive to Highlighted route” Good work Mark for catching that one.

That’s “Please drive to highlighted route” you are hearing not “Please drive to Highland Road”. LOL

We drove to Boston. The Nuvi gave good directions until we got off of Mass Pike at Exit 18 (as also recommended by others including the hotel and Google Maps). From there, the Nuvi directed us to cross the Charles River into Cambridge, then drive downstream on Memorial Drive, instead of driving downstream on Storrow Drive on the Boston side. I checked the rest of the Nuvi route. We were instructed to exit Memorial Drive at Main Street and cross the bridge into Boston, then look for Blossom Street. Many an out-of-state driver would have been confused by the traffic circle where the bridge traffic merges with the traffic exiting Storrow Drive, because the name of the street changes from Main St to Cambridge St on the Boston side of the river. Nuvi does not tell the driver to drive on Cambridge St., leaving the out-of-state driver wondering how to find Main St on the Boston side of the river. Since we ignored the Nuvi instructions and drove the shorter/faster route downriver on Storrow Drive, we did not have that problem. However, we are not happy with the Nuvi routing software.

Another thing for the newbie to worry about is to have the correct vehicle type checked in the settings. (Click the wrench on the initialization screen that you normally use to check whether to enter an address or look at the maps.) If you drive a truck (e.g., U-Haul), you need to initialize the Nuvi for truck, not leave it on the default setting of auto/motorcycle. Suppose you forget the truck setting when you are driving a U-Haul truck. Taking the auto route down either Storrow Drive or Memorial Drive will result in the top of your truck being sliced off by the low underpasses. I have seen this happen several times as those high IQ MIT students drove their U-Hauls down Memorial Drive toward the Harvard Bridge.

At the end of our stay, I turned on my Nuvi 660 and asked for the fastest route home. It took a long time, but eventually the Nuvi found our location on Blossom Street. By that time, my wife had gone downstairs and gotten recommendations on the best route to Mass Pike (I-90). The Nuvi gave me the voice prompt “Drive to Highland Road”. Of course, there is no Highland Road in Boston. The Nuvi route involved going back upstream along the Charles River. The hotel valet told my wife the fastest route was to go the other way on Storrow Drive for 500 feet, take a right and go into the I-93 tunnel to the I-80 intersection. Of course, Nuvi could not give continuous directions to a driver going through the maze of highway tunnels under Boston, with the underground left exit to I-80, since it would have completely lost the satellite signals.

The GPS receiver may be a marvelous technological innovation, but my wife refuses to rely on this gadget. The software has failed us four out of five tries.