There's no place like home. And soon we'll all be home expanding our waistlines with Thanksgiving feasts as the population of State College deflates for a few days during the annual holiday student diaspora.

Just think -- only a stretch of Pennsylvania highway separates you from a hot, fresh feast with all the fixings and familiar family conversations.

Well, there's the traffic, too. Don't forget about the traffic, with seemingly ubiquitous orange road cones and depressingly few open driving lanes.

Ever think about why that is? My frustrations with traffic in, around and outside State College drove me to find some answers.

What I found was not too surprising, but perhaps the knowledge of why I'm sitting in wall-to-wall traffic will placate me a bit on my ride home Monday night.

First, I should say that Thanksgiving merely provided me with a nice segue into venting about traffic; it's no surprise there will be high numbers of people taking to the roads.

But each time I trek home in my laundry-stuffed, compact-sized car, I suffer from a spell of log-jammed traffic. Some other students commiserated with me.

One said the traffic situation frustrates her because there are few alternate routes to and from Penn State, which is a legitimate gripe, but one for another column. Another student, who'll ride as a passenger with his friend Tuesday, said he is relieved to be the passenger and not the driver on their trip to the Harrisburg area.

Feeling bolstered by fellow students' like opinions, I thought the situation warranted searching for an explanation.

I began hunting for an answer by staking out big game: Pennsylvania's Department of Transportation (PennDOT for kind of short). I was going to put the spokesman through the wringer. I mean, doesn't PennDOT understand I was terribly inconvenienced and irritated at waiting in lines of traffic?

I know I am not the only person, and I half expected an apology because I couldn't fathom an acceptable response to my queries about traffic troubles.

I had specific grievances and to his credit, the PennDOT spokesman had adequately believable answers. My complaint: Why does Pennsylvania close 10-mile stretches of road with orange, reflective cones on Route 322 eastbound outside Lewistown in Mifflin County about 20 miles from State College?

Each time I've suffered through a traffic jam, it has been there. Each time there have been cones but no workers, drivers' frustrations but no trace of work to be started. PennDOT's spokesman said the department hears complaints, listens to them and then closes the lanes anyway.

Hardly mollified, I pressed him for a reason. He continued and said that the department closes that stretch of road for workers' and drivers' safety - a general PennDOT rule -- saying it is not feasible to remove the cones for weekend travel, the time when most students use 322. He went on to say that the department avoids peak hours and limits roadwork to major construction projects, leaving regular maintenance for late-night shifts.

I'm skeptical of that part. It makes sense that the spokesman would say such a thing, but the response skirts the issue. The problem is not sitting in rush-hour traffic; the problem is that needlessly closed lanes compound rush-hour traffic.

At least now, I have some answers. For the rest of the traveling Penn State nation, we can start the "We are ..." chant stuck in traffic together, because you should know that the Greyhound bus station on North Atherton expects at least 1,000 students to cram both Greyhound and Fullington coaches headed across the state. Those headed westbound, I'm sorry I don't know your traffic woes, but Greyhound bus terminal's manager told me that a large portion of the buses headed out travel toward Pittsburgh and Monroeville on Interstate 80. This is a forewarning.

What's important is getting home to that Thanksgiving dinner. If I have to wait a little longer, so be it. If I don't have to wait in traffic, then I'll have one more thing to be thankful for this year.