The exit ramp sign that made me rethink my whole route

I drive the 101 through San Jose every day, and last Tuesday I missed my usual exit because the big green sign was covered by a tarp from road work, so I had to loop around through downtown. That detour took 25 extra minutes but I found this back road that cuts past the flea market and saves me 10 minutes even in traffic. Has anyone else found a better alternate route by accidentally missing an exit, or am I just lucky this one time?

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nora_park20d ago

...and that's exactly how I found my shortcut through the Bayshore cutoff after the 280 merge was shut down for a month. I missed the exit for the bridge one night and ended up on this little service road that runs parallel to the freeway, which sounds backwards but it actually skips the worst bottleneck between Palo Alto and the airport. Now I take it every day unless it's pouring rain, since the road floods super easy and then you're really stuck. The funny thing is I tried to show my coworker the route and he missed one turn and ended up in some industrial park, so it's not exactly foolproof. But yeah, sometimes a tarp or a closed lane is a weird blessing in disguise. Just make sure you check the map first, because that "faster" road can turn into a nightmare if they're doing construction on it too.