Photo: Chaiel Schaffel/WBZ NewsRadio
SAGAMORE, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) — After a Fourth of July weekend of barbecue, fireworks, and American flags, holiday travelers hit the roads home Sunday.
Unfortunately, the thousands who spent the weekend on Cape Cod found themselves lost at sea—a sea of taillights.
The post-holiday traffic crush created hours-long delays for those trying to get off the Cape in the mid-day and early afternoon, with the traffic expected to be at its worst through late Sunday night.
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"I would love to live here, but there’s no way I’d fight that traffic," said Elizabeth, who sat along the Cape Cod Canal with a book. She and her husband do not cross the canal anymore because they have been burned too many times.
"We said we’d never come down again. It’s terrible. It took us an hour to get a mile," Elizabeth said.
"We left at 8:00 in the morning to come down here because I knew the traffic would be bad," said Bob, who was with friends at a park on the peaceful mainland side of the canal. "Most of the weekend warriors here, they don’t get out of their house ‘til 10:00, 11:00 in the morning, and they suffer."
Meanwhile, other holiday travelers who went to the Cape and Islands this weekend used a different mode of transportation to get home—a Steamship Authority ferry taking them from Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard to Woods Hole.
1 of 2 Photo: Chaiel Schaffel/WBZ NewsRadio
2 of 2 Photo: Chaiel Schaffel/WBZ NewsRadio
"It's my first time on the island, and I've been to Nantucket before," said Corinne, who went with her friend Fanny. The pair have a long journey back home to Montreal.
"We have to drive back home and it's a really long drive," Corinne said. "So, like, eight hours by car."
Jim and Jennifer also have quite the return trip ahead of them.
"We’re from Syracuse, so it’s going to be at least six hours," Jim told WBZ NewsRadio.
"We usually don’t travel on the 4th because of the travel rush," Jennifer added.
Jim said they are taking their journey back one step at a time and have one goal for now.
"It’s getting off the Cape, and getting right up there in the middle of that turnpike, and then it’s all kind of clear sailing all the way up until we get to Syracuse," Jim said.
WBZ’s Chaiel Schaffel (@CSchaffelWBZ) reports.
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