We drove all over the UK, with just a big road atlas. Did very well. Drove in Germany too, only got on wrong road once. I would not like to try that now.
Oh, my friends and I never got lost. We just weren’t sure where we were sometimes. As the man in the video says, we were perfectly comfortable with the unknown at our fingertips. Some truly great serendipitous moments happened that way. Worst case, we could find a working pay phone (remember those?) and call. It might be a hall phone on the other end, but eventually someone would answer and get us straightened out.
What I’d love to have back is the many hand-drawn maps we made. If it was a town I knew, verbal directions would usually suffice. But more often, maps would be sketched on the back of napkins, back of envelopes, even whole sheets of ruled paper stuffed in a letter. The maps usually showed important landmarks like churches, post offices, corner stores, and so on. The maps from the gas station would get us close, and then the hand-drawn maps (and kibbitzing from the car occupants) would get us the rest of the way.
May I be an old fogey for a moment and say that something is lost when Googling for everything is the norm, when the need for certainty is so high? Some years ago, my daughter drove from NC to NYC. She did it in record time. I asked her, “What route did you take to do that?” Response: “I don’t know. I just did what Google Maps told me to do.” Sigh…
Apple Maps will guide you to making an illegal right turn to cut the line for the Edmonds ferry. If there is a line and you cut it, expect some possibly unpleasant social correction.
A few years ago, a friend was taking her daughter to a college in Missouri. She didn’t have a paper map and was relying on GPS. She wasn’t paying attention and got off on some rural roads. The GPS system was not helping and she felt like she was getting further off track. She called me.
I asked her to drive to the next route/mile marker and stop driving as I called up some maps of the area. I ended up being the more accurate direction system.
I really liked the old AAA triptiks which were small handheld maps that were in a small binder. Flip to the next page and no worries about folding the map up or trying to locate where you were. Even though I knew the route from home to my mom’s home, I still like using them as a check for hotels, gas stations, alternate routes in case of a road slowdown.
We never had much trouble getting by with printed maps, though they were a lot easier when one drove and the other navigated, and I can’t deny that the driver sometimes gave into the temptation to get snark with the navigator, who sometimes threatened to go on strike.
I do appreciate the ability to get back on track with a GPS system, especially at night.
Certainly got lost a few times, but I was pretty good at reading road maps.
Early in my Navy career I was stationed in Rota Spain for three years. We drove all over Spain, Portugal and Gibraltar before commercial GPS or the Internet was a thing.
Getting directions when you barely speak the language is challenging.
But as far as getting lost, is that always really such a bad thing? Sure, it is if you’re on a schedule and it makes you miss something important, but when on vacation or just traveling around? Discovered many cool and interesting things while on parts of the “route” that weren’t exactly planned.
Bikers even have a term for it. Getting lost is called a “motorcycle shortcut”.
Of course, reading maps while riding a motorcycle can be a bit problematic, so motorcycle shortcuts were quite common even amongst the most experienced riders.
Plus, on a motorcycle, the ride is the purpose of the trip more than the destination, so minor details like ending up on a little road in the middle of nowhere with no idea where it goes are not even an inconvenience. Best way to find out where it goes is…drive on.
I did get lost on rare occasion. Including a couple of bad errors. But I/We had maps. Lots of them, and I knew how to read them.
I recall meeting up with old friend from my grad school days several years later. He had moved half a continent away to an area in southern MN. I happened to be in my old hometown in IA and drove to visit him. When I knocked on his door, he said, “Gee, how did you find the place?” I said, “I grew up in this general area. All the roads were laid out by the Army Corp. of Engineers, in a rectilinear grid. It’s quite easy.”
______
I recall a funny episode a few years ago. I was visiting a friend in a town she had moved to a few years prior. A group of 4 of us piled into her fancy Audi and we drove across the city to a night spot, using her car’s navigation system. She was very confident of that system.
I was sitting in the back, and by the time we should have been getting to our destination, she and the man in the front seat were getting rather hostile to each other. It turns out that following her nav system, we were way off the correct path. Plus, the man had been a cabbie in Chicago for many years, and had learned to memorize city streets perfectly. He was practically beside himself.
He was so good, that we were never lost. Once she relented, he immediately guided us to the spot.
It’s odd that she knew about his skills even though I didn’t. Yet she persisted for some time. The computer is always correct!
I loved the Thomas Guides. At one job, when we had good-bye parties for people moving, I would give them a Thomas Guide (if there was one) for the city to which they were moving. When I lived in CA, I had several from around teh state in my car.
Whenever I made a drive of some distance, my mom would pick up a triptik for me from AAA.
The USGS used to publish beautiful charts that were frame-worthy. Then they said they weren’t going to anymore. And then they didn’t Then they said they were. I don’t know that status.
I do miss the days of not-knowing.
Lee Also,
Thomas maps! I had a bunch in the car too.
I love maps and I’ve always been the family navigator.
In Paris right now. Daughter leading the way with her phone. Also she did a semester abroad here 10 years ago and knows her way around.
I’ve got a fold up paper map from the big department store in my purse.
At a stop for coffee I was compelled to get it out and find our location. Might as well wear a sign saying ‘American Tourist!’
But I needed to orient myself to the river and the other big landmarks.
Phone GPS is great – especially the corrective aspect – but it’s so granular that it literally loses the ‘big picture’.
Waze (which i discovered was designed by a member of the unit 8200 signal corp) is much more accurate specially in europe with all those backroads and culdesacs
We use Google Maps in the RV and it’s very reliable. When we know an area, it sometimes doesn’t choose the route I would choose, but it always gets us there. I’m very dependent on it because I like to know in advance what lane to be in driving the motorhome in cities.
Two summers ago we used GPS coordinates to follow the Mullan Road, a 630 mile military road constructed between 1859-1861 between Ft. Benton, MT and Ft. Walla Walla, WA. The “road” doesn’t exist anymore, except the current road may follow, be paved over the old road, but in the 1910-1920’s local and state historical societies built monuments to Capt. John Mullan. A couple by the name of Dave and Sue Eakin followed the road 10 years ago and documented all the monuments, including the GPS coordinates.
Being the intrepid trailblazers, we entered the coordinates and bingo, a turn by turn direction from one monument to the next. It was basically that simple, though not exactly. Some of the memorials are down unpaved county roads, and some are accessible on with a 4×4 and at least one is on private property that doesn’t allow access.
But it was a fascinating trip, to see the terrain and obstacles Mullan and his construction crew faced building the road.
John Mullan began surveying for the Mullan Road in 1853, as part of Isaac Stevens’ Northern Pacific Railroad Survey. He gathered information and explored potential routes from 1853 to 1854, with the actual survey work for the road continuing intermittently through the 1850s, delayed by events like the Yakima War (1855–1858). The detailed survey and planning culminated in the road’s construction starting in 1859.
John Mullan began surveying for the Mullan Road in 1853, as part of Isaac Stevens’ Northern Pacific Railroad Survey. He gathered information and explored potential routes from 1853 to 1854, with the actual survey work for the road continuing intermittently through the 1850s, delayed by events like the Yakima War (1855–1858). The detailed survey and planning culminated in the road’s construction starting in 1859.
John Mullan began surveying for the Mullan Road in 1853, as part of Isaac Stevens’ Northern Pacific Railroad Survey. He gathered information and explored potential routes from 1853 to 1854, with the actual survey work for the road continuing intermittently through the 1850s, delayed by events like the Yakima War (1855–1858). The detailed survey and planning culminated in the road’s construction starting in 1859.
John Mullan began surveying for the Mullan Road in 1853, as part of Isaac Stevens’ Northern Pacific Railroad Survey. He gathered information and explored potential routes from 1853 to 1854, with the actual survey work for the road continuing intermittently through the 1850s, delayed by events like the Yakima War (1855–1858). The detailed survey and planning culminated in the road’s construction starting in 1859.
John Mullan began surveying for the Mullan Road in 1853, as part of Isaac Stevens’ Northern Pacific Railroad Survey. He gathered information and explored potential routes from 1853 to 1854, with the actual survey work for the road continuing intermittently through the 1850s, delayed by events like the Yakima War (1855–1858). The detailed survey and planning culminated in the road’s construction starting in 1859.
John Mullan began surveying for the Mullan Road in 1853, as part of Isaac Stevens’ Northern Pacific Railroad Survey. He gathered information and explored potential routes from 1853 to 1854, with the actual survey work for the road continuing intermittently through the 1850s, delayed by events like the Indian War (1855–1858).
Ft. Benton was never a military fort, but a Hudson Bay trading post at a point that is the highest navigable point on the Missouri River.
The road was classified as a military road to get funding, but it was intended as a way for settlers to reach the inland northwest.
GPS is not always reliable or helpful, especially in urban areas with complicated intersections and freeway interchanges. The instructions (with Siri and Google Maps) are often incomplete, confusing, or downright inaccurate in real time. Since I occasionally drive in NYC it’s a problem. For example, it happens every time I come to the GW Bridge/Cross Bronx Expressway exit off the Henry Hudson Parkway. The exit splits into three at the outset, and then the middle one splits again if you are getting onto the Cross Bronx, and the verbal directions are either wrong or confusing. I generally know where I’m going so it hasn’t caused a major problem, but it’s basically worthless or worse. It’s happened in other places as well at highway entrances and exits in unfamiliar places where it has caused mistakes.
Once when we were in Tucson we put in directions for some museum, and Google Maps took us literally 20 miles out of our way to some remote spot where there was nothing even resembling a museum.
We didn’t miss what we didn’t have yet. The overwhelming majority of us couldn’t even fathom what was to come in terms of near instant uinversal access to massive amounts of information anywhere, anytime. If you were to tell me back in say… 1995 that within the next few decades we’d all be walking around with extremely powerful computers in our pockets that could basically answer most surface level questions instantly with minimal effort I’d certainly believe it, but I may not have realized the full implications of it (but then again I might have as I did and still do have a decent imagination). Such future capabilities weren’t really that relevant at the moment.
The future hasn’t really exactly turned out as I imagined it might back in the mid 90s. Certain things were far more significant than I guessed and other things just never really came to pass or haven’t really yet anyway. I remember thinking/hoping that by now in 2025 we’d have highly advanced genetic engineering to the point that’d we’d have cured most diseases and extended people’s lifespans by a lot. I remember thinking that by now we’d likely have a pretty well established moon colony and would have at least sent people to Mars. Also direct computer-brain interfaces would exist. I think I envisioned the internet a bit differently, not really the all pervasive thing it seems to be in our lives, but something that was far more casually used.
Once when we were in Tucson we put in directions for some museum, and Google Maps took us literally 20 miles out of our way to some remote spot where there was nothing even resembling a museum.
==
Someone dear to me put in directions for Hardy, Va, in Franklin County, starting in Alexandria. It took her to a Hardee’s in Fredericksburg, Va. She reset it and it took her here, there, and the next place on a series of back roads ‘ere she realized that she’d hit a setting which told the application to avoid Interstates.
Once when we were in Tucson…
I wouldn’t blame that on Google Maps. It was probably trying to find the quickest route to your destination. Since it’s totally impossible to get anywhere quickly in Tucson (I lived there for 2 years, I can attest) Google Maps most likely just gave up.
I thought the whole point was to GET lost…
…and then found again (hopefully all the wiser…).
Jimmy GPS is not always reliable or helpful, especially in urban areas
A number of times people trying to get to my condo address have gotten poor GPS directions to another condo complex a half mile away. I have gotten calls from lost people: “Please open the gate.” There is no locked gate at my condo complex, but there is a locked gate at the condo a half mile away.
I have driven from Texas to New England without a map. IIRC, I have also hitched cross country without a map. I-80 from SF to Chicago, then I-90 to New England. Easy Peasy. Following are some anecdotes about getting from one place to another.
When I was five we spent the summer at our grandparents’ house in OK. They lived in a small town with about a thousand people and a small central business district –post office, department store (long since closed down), drug store, IGA grocery. I walked all over the place, never having a problem with getting back to my grandparents’ house. When my seven year old sister walked by herself, she got lost. Guess that my spatial sense beat her greater age.
When I was 7 I figured out how to walk a quarter mile through the woods—crossing a small waterway and a dry ditch—to the post office.
I got a bicycle for my 9th birthday. On one foray, I rode past a friend’s house onto relatively unfamiliar territory. After a mile or two—maybe four miles from my house—I realized I was lost. I rode on, either crying or near tears—but did not turn back—until I had the good fortune to arrive at the state road that connected my school and my house. That experience showed me that maps are useful. My parents gave me sensible instructions that I religiously followed: back roads and the state route are fine for riding your bike, but stay away from the US route.
In the days of Internet maps but before GPS, my sister on the Mass North Shore printed out a route from some Internet site which she said would save me money on Mass Pike tolls—driving overland to I-495. I found the instructions very difficult to follow. I navigate more by landmarks than by “drive 2.4 miles..” In any event, the attempt to save Mass Pike tolls was penny wise and pound foolish—saved a dollar or two—as my sister lived several miles from I-95,north of 128.Much easier to have taken I-95 to 128 to the Pike. Oh well. (A hometown friend got a job in Boston. One time between her parents’ house and Boston, she got a speeding ticket on the Mass Pike. Her brothers’ reaction: “You got a speeding ticket? On the Mass Pike?” As I had observed speeders passing on the shoulder on the Mass Pike, I shared her brothers’ incredulity.)
Regarding the video discussing using the Internet to find out celebrity information, I am reminded of seeing on the Internet a 1948 photo of Marilyn Monroe, before she became a blonde. I was amazed at the resemblance between Marilyn Monroe and my aunt at her 1948 wedding— a year younger than Marilyn. I asked my cousin if she had realized the resemblance between Marilyn and her mother. Yes, came the reply. Both Marilyn and my aunt died tragic deaths before they turned 40.
I remember thinking/hoping that by now in 2025 we’d have highly advanced genetic engineering to the point that’d we’d have cured most diseases and extended people’s lifespans by a lot.
Nonapod:
Me too. However…
AI guru Ray Kurzweil, whose projections sounded insane 25 years ago, called the current AI explosion with astonishing accuracy. He now predicts that with AI humanity may achieve “longevity escape velocity” (LEV) by 2030.
Which means that medical science will be extending human lifespan faster than we are aging. Which means …
_______________________________
Do you really want to live forever?
Forever, and ever
Forever young, I want to be forever young
I am capable of getting lost even WITH iMaps telling me what to do. The problem is especially bad at the beginning of the route. “Proceed to the designated route,” but which way do I turn to go there? I have absolutely no sense of direction. I now wear an iWatch which at least tells me what direction I’m facing. I never knew before. My Eagle Scout husband knows which direction he’s facing without any outside assistance.
Huxley, I don’t think I want to live forever, and if I did, I wouldn’t be young again — which has its good and bad points.
Kate, you may be one of those people who hates it when others try to tell ‘em what to do, where to go, etc. Especially when they have creepy, fake but super-confident voices.
(I’m like that—sometimes I can’t take it anymore and get lost just to spite them…).
In any event, it looks like Adam Schiff—yeah, him—also has a bit of trouble with directions….
I once missed the entire state of Arizona, but I found it again.
I also drove for more than 40 years without a phone, which my younger relatives can’t even imagine.
What’s that? Forty years in the (Arizona) desert?
You mean you were there all that time and didn’t know it?
(That would appear to take “mirage” to the next level…)
No, Barry, it’s not a rebellious nature in my case. I quite literally don’t know which direction I’m going. If I have the roads clearly in my memory, and the turns, I’m okay. When making a turn in unfamiliar territory, I will almost always make the wrong choice. I lose my car in parking lots. It’s the Eagle Scout I live with who hates lots of people telling him what to do. He objects to the female voice on the GPS.
Back when our kids were “little,” the family joke used to be “It’s not a family holiday if we haven’t been lost at least once.” And driving in the nearest major metropolitan area was always, “the festival of the U-turn.”
I’ve always had a pretty dodgy sense of direction…my wonderful wife has proven a very capable navigator.
Google Maps is location broke. At least when it comes to small businesses.
I think the Woke/PC era since 2020 has seen them indulge their radical employees elsewhere, thus failing to track failed and closed businesses all over the map. And therefore GPS directions are so often misleading.
It takes a dedicated business vision focused leadership that “sticks to the knitting” — the core competencies that once made its search engine essential.
Maps. Paper maps. I love them and am having a hard time finding one for the greater San Antonio area! I always like to see where I am *in relation to* where something else (like downtown San Antonio) is. I hate trying to do that on a computer map or worse, on my phone. I used to love Thomas Guides and the AAA maps.
But more than the map question, I find myself wondering, what the heck did I (we) do when we were say, watching something, saw a person and thought, “where have I seen him before?” Now I can go to the web, find the person’s name and see what else he/she has been in. I have no recollection of what I did “back then.”
Or, you hear a news story about another country and want to find out where it is, maybe a bit about its history. Did I used to go to the library? I went to the library a lot with my kids, but I don’t remember going just to look up some random fact. It’s weird to me that I have a hard time remembering this. I didn’t get on the web until the early 2000s, and I was in my 40s, so it’s not THAT (terribly) long ago.
I’ve always liked to just go down that road just to see where and what, sometimes you do get lost, make sure your tank is full. If I’m going from point A to point B, for a definite purpose, then I always try to map it out first, make a note of landmarks or major highlights.
Gas station maps. Still have a collection of them. Closest thing now is state maps at interstate rest areas. Remember before the interstates were built (or were being built)?
“Lost” is when you can’t find your way back; didn’t know where I was often enough but never lost.
Bugs has emerged from a hole he has dug and is staring at a map, while wondering how he ended up at the South Pole or Spain or in a cave.
The story goes that Chuck Jones, the Looney Tunes animator god, often drove from LA to the Santa Fe Opera. The turn he missed is reputed to be at 4th and Central here in sunny Abq.
gwynmir – When I was growing up, I went to the library a lot. But to look up those small random facts, I went to my Dad’s home office (the library) and looked at the globe and the encyclopedias. We also had lots of other books of great lit, poems, plays.
Now, I would say that most “modern” homes do not have their own reference books anymore.
yes, those cartoons were classic,
that would see to have been a really big miss, since santa fe, is two states away,
the old dictionaries like one my grandfather picked up in spain, has some of the old maps, that one can fill in the blanks,
I had a bigger book collection down in South Florida, which we either donated or had to give up,
I miss hard copy encyclopedias. And I have a real dictionary saved from my college years. And a thesaurus.
Brian E,
You can say that again!
huxley and miguel,
And lots not forget Johnny Carson as Art Fern, “take the Slauson Cutoff…”
Rufus T. Firefly, apparently it was so good I couldn’t say it enough!
I kept pasting that paragraph into the comment window, but nothing was showing in the window. Even if most of the paragraph was pasted below the window, you would think at least one or two lines would be visible.
I should have checked my comment, and could have caught it, but I was in a hurry to get to a rental and clear a blocked sewer line to the septic tank. The joy of being a landlord.
Anyone missing hard copy encyclopedias can get them very inexpensively since so many libraries have got rid of them over the years. Growing up I had World Book 1974 and a few years ago I got a set of World Book from about ten years later, for very little.
Can’t imagine a world without maps. Who would want to hear those dreaded words when asking for directions “You can’t get there from here.”
FWIW, my state offered a free paper state map on one of its websites, and mailed me one after a couple requests.
*giggle* I drove from Athens (taking the car ferry at Patras to Brindisi) up through Italy (over the Brenner Pass) across Southern Germany, across France, and half of Spain (and several summers driving through Northern and Southern Spain) with the aid of a map atlas of Europe the size of a small telephone book. I usually had it open on the passenger seat next to me.
I did get lost trying to get out of Rome, though – had to appeal to a couple of locals, for directions to the Via Salaria, which was the way north. And when I drove through France, I didn’t want to pay for traveling on the toll road/highways. I worked out a route for the day, memorizing all the names of the small towns along the small secondary roads, and hopped from town to town, looking for the directional signs to the next town at the various crossroads and roundabouts.
I’ve loved looking at and reading maps since I was a little kid. It culminated in a small collection of official state maps that states give away at their rest areas. 32 states down, 18 to go…
Great video.
I’ll give props to Rand McNally for finding directions and for researching general trivia, Almanacs were handy.
I love paper maps. As mentioned above, the AAA triptics were great. Once in Spain, we were driving from Almeria to Jerez, had a new map, and south of Sevilla
we came to the end of a highway, still being built, nothing but dirt, causing a lengthy detour north to Sevilla, then south toward Cadiz, and finally Jerez de la frontera. That’s once in 20 years. Still use paper maps, although I’m too old for long distance drives.
@ Jimmy: ” … The exit splits into three at the outset, and then the middle one splits again…”
We don’t travel over that many new interstates anymore, but I am seeing this type of “exit ramp” becoming more common — one “real exit” with several “sub exits” coming off of it. If you don’t realize that is the arrangement it can be pretty easy to miss your desired turn, but if you know this layout is coming it can be easier to exit off of a busy interstate. Just have to realize your “exit” is 2 to 4 miles prior to when you would expect to reach the applicable mile marker.
Explaining this type of exit arrangement to someone traveling to your location who has not been there before or had experience with this can be a challenge.
When we were stationed in Germany several decades ago, I was impressed with how they had graphic map or path signs indicating 3/4 circle turns or other possible travel paths at round abouts or other major highway intersections. Usually readily understood with just a quick glance. Given some of the spaghetti concrete loop de loops and flyways we now see, such map signs might be really helpful.
Just don’t forget: the map is not the territory. 🙂
”…I am seeing this type of ‘exit ramp’ becoming more common…”
It’s called a collector-distributor. It’s used when there are multiple off- and on-ramps in a short distance so that the resulting weaving motion is pulled off the main highway. That keeps the main highway flowing at speed and reduces the speed (and thus severity) of any crashes that occur. FYI.
mkent, yes, those are kind of neat. At exits 3 and 4 on free I-90 in Albany, there’s a collector-distributor. That’s right where I join up with 90 each day. It’d be much more useful, I think, to have it at exits 6 to 6A more toward downtown because there’s frequently an accident there in the morning, but creating one there at this point would be quite difficult.
The more you know, the more you know that there’s lots more you don’t know.
We’ve long known many folks are uncomfortable with uncertainty, but also that a huge amount of useful or interesting info that is known, to others, is not known to you. (Unknown knowns! The fourth quarter like #3 unknown unknowns)
We often go from knowing things, to speculation about what we don’t know. Like, we now know Trump’s tariffs did result in big income to the govt, and not much inflation (yet?). But this true news is not so emphasized as the speculations of so many Econ experts that tariffs would lead to big inflation. The demand for truth about the future far exceeds the supply.
Ai can mostly tell us the unknown knowns, we as individuals don’t know, but it is known. But in April, tariff based inflation was a known unknown, with the news accurately saying some expert speculation which turned out to be wrong.
What company bosses want is true speculation about the future based on going left or right, a decision. Accurate maps can resolve this in fixed geography, but the future is not fixed.
The more I write, the more I want to write about the related stuff not written about.
But it’s so much work, maybe Grok can help do it for me.
Whats wrong with his methodology?
We have occasionally depended on GPS with unfortunate results, when it thinks there is a road where that is not true.
Perhaps all the computers have been hallucinating for more years than AI is now famous for.
My favorite direction from “the locals” to the lost is the man in Illinois who directed AesopSpouse’s parents trying to find the old family farm, which was go down the road a piece and turn left where the old schoolhouse used to be.
(PS I HATE this font without serifs, where the capital I and the small L look the same. There is an almost-imperceptible thickness to the I that makes it wider than the l. Good luck seeing that without a magnifying glass.)
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We drove all over the UK, with just a big road atlas. Did very well. Drove in Germany too, only got on wrong road once. I would not like to try that now.
Oh, my friends and I never got lost. We just weren’t sure where we were sometimes. As the man in the video says, we were perfectly comfortable with the unknown at our fingertips. Some truly great serendipitous moments happened that way. Worst case, we could find a working pay phone (remember those?) and call. It might be a hall phone on the other end, but eventually someone would answer and get us straightened out.
What I’d love to have back is the many hand-drawn maps we made. If it was a town I knew, verbal directions would usually suffice. But more often, maps would be sketched on the back of napkins, back of envelopes, even whole sheets of ruled paper stuffed in a letter. The maps usually showed important landmarks like churches, post offices, corner stores, and so on. The maps from the gas station would get us close, and then the hand-drawn maps (and kibbitzing from the car occupants) would get us the rest of the way.
May I be an old fogey for a moment and say that something is lost when Googling for everything is the norm, when the need for certainty is so high? Some years ago, my daughter drove from NC to NYC. She did it in record time. I asked her, “What route did you take to do that?” Response: “I don’t know. I just did what Google Maps told me to do.” Sigh…
Apple Maps will guide you to making an illegal right turn to cut the line for the Edmonds ferry. If there is a line and you cut it, expect some possibly unpleasant social correction.
A few years ago, a friend was taking her daughter to a college in Missouri. She didn’t have a paper map and was relying on GPS. She wasn’t paying attention and got off on some rural roads. The GPS system was not helping and she felt like she was getting further off track. She called me.
I asked her to drive to the next route/mile marker and stop driving as I called up some maps of the area. I ended up being the more accurate direction system.
I really liked the old AAA triptiks which were small handheld maps that were in a small binder. Flip to the next page and no worries about folding the map up or trying to locate where you were. Even though I knew the route from home to my mom’s home, I still like using them as a check for hotels, gas stations, alternate routes in case of a road slowdown.
We never had much trouble getting by with printed maps, though they were a lot easier when one drove and the other navigated, and I can’t deny that the driver sometimes gave into the temptation to get snark with the navigator, who sometimes threatened to go on strike.
I do appreciate the ability to get back on track with a GPS system, especially at night.
Certainly got lost a few times, but I was pretty good at reading road maps.
Early in my Navy career I was stationed in Rota Spain for three years. We drove all over Spain, Portugal and Gibraltar before commercial GPS or the Internet was a thing.
Getting directions when you barely speak the language is challenging.
But as far as getting lost, is that always really such a bad thing? Sure, it is if you’re on a schedule and it makes you miss something important, but when on vacation or just traveling around? Discovered many cool and interesting things while on parts of the “route” that weren’t exactly planned.
Bikers even have a term for it. Getting lost is called a “motorcycle shortcut”.
Of course, reading maps while riding a motorcycle can be a bit problematic, so motorcycle shortcuts were quite common even amongst the most experienced riders.
Plus, on a motorcycle, the ride is the purpose of the trip more than the destination, so minor details like ending up on a little road in the middle of nowhere with no idea where it goes are not even an inconvenience. Best way to find out where it goes is…drive on.
I did get lost on rare occasion. Including a couple of bad errors. But I/We had maps. Lots of them, and I knew how to read them.
I recall meeting up with old friend from my grad school days several years later. He had moved half a continent away to an area in southern MN. I happened to be in my old hometown in IA and drove to visit him. When I knocked on his door, he said, “Gee, how did you find the place?” I said, “I grew up in this general area. All the roads were laid out by the Army Corp. of Engineers, in a rectilinear grid. It’s quite easy.”
______
I recall a funny episode a few years ago. I was visiting a friend in a town she had moved to a few years prior. A group of 4 of us piled into her fancy Audi and we drove across the city to a night spot, using her car’s navigation system. She was very confident of that system.
I was sitting in the back, and by the time we should have been getting to our destination, she and the man in the front seat were getting rather hostile to each other. It turns out that following her nav system, we were way off the correct path. Plus, the man had been a cabbie in Chicago for many years, and had learned to memorize city streets perfectly. He was practically beside himself.
He was so good, that we were never lost. Once she relented, he immediately guided us to the spot.
It’s odd that she knew about his skills even though I didn’t. Yet she persisted for some time. The computer is always correct!
I loved the Thomas Guides. At one job, when we had good-bye parties for people moving, I would give them a Thomas Guide (if there was one) for the city to which they were moving. When I lived in CA, I had several from around teh state in my car.
Whenever I made a drive of some distance, my mom would pick up a triptik for me from AAA.
The USGS used to publish beautiful charts that were frame-worthy. Then they said they weren’t going to anymore. And then they didn’t Then they said they were. I don’t know that status.
I do miss the days of not-knowing.
Lee Also,
Thomas maps! I had a bunch in the car too.
I love maps and I’ve always been the family navigator.
In Paris right now. Daughter leading the way with her phone. Also she did a semester abroad here 10 years ago and knows her way around.
I’ve got a fold up paper map from the big department store in my purse.
At a stop for coffee I was compelled to get it out and find our location. Might as well wear a sign saying ‘American Tourist!’
But I needed to orient myself to the river and the other big landmarks.
Phone GPS is great – especially the corrective aspect – but it’s so granular that it literally loses the ‘big picture’.
China blows up 300 dams, shuts hydropower stations to save Yangtze River habitat | South China Morning Post https://share.google/VrK4e0vDTdwUZYOie
Waze (which i discovered was designed by a member of the unit 8200 signal corp) is much more accurate specially in europe with all those backroads and culdesacs
We use Google Maps in the RV and it’s very reliable. When we know an area, it sometimes doesn’t choose the route I would choose, but it always gets us there. I’m very dependent on it because I like to know in advance what lane to be in driving the motorhome in cities.
Two summers ago we used GPS coordinates to follow the Mullan Road, a 630 mile military road constructed between 1859-1861 between Ft. Benton, MT and Ft. Walla Walla, WA. The “road” doesn’t exist anymore, except the current road may follow, be paved over the old road, but in the 1910-1920’s local and state historical societies built monuments to Capt. John Mullan. A couple by the name of Dave and Sue Eakin followed the road 10 years ago and documented all the monuments, including the GPS coordinates.
Being the intrepid trailblazers, we entered the coordinates and bingo, a turn by turn direction from one monument to the next. It was basically that simple, though not exactly. Some of the memorials are down unpaved county roads, and some are accessible on with a 4×4 and at least one is on private property that doesn’t allow access.
But it was a fascinating trip, to see the terrain and obstacles Mullan and his construction crew faced building the road.
John Mullan began surveying for the Mullan Road in 1853, as part of Isaac Stevens’ Northern Pacific Railroad Survey. He gathered information and explored potential routes from 1853 to 1854, with the actual survey work for the road continuing intermittently through the 1850s, delayed by events like the Yakima War (1855–1858). The detailed survey and planning culminated in the road’s construction starting in 1859.
John Mullan began surveying for the Mullan Road in 1853, as part of Isaac Stevens’ Northern Pacific Railroad Survey. He gathered information and explored potential routes from 1853 to 1854, with the actual survey work for the road continuing intermittently through the 1850s, delayed by events like the Yakima War (1855–1858). The detailed survey and planning culminated in the road’s construction starting in 1859.
John Mullan began surveying for the Mullan Road in 1853, as part of Isaac Stevens’ Northern Pacific Railroad Survey. He gathered information and explored potential routes from 1853 to 1854, with the actual survey work for the road continuing intermittently through the 1850s, delayed by events like the Yakima War (1855–1858). The detailed survey and planning culminated in the road’s construction starting in 1859.
John Mullan began surveying for the Mullan Road in 1853, as part of Isaac Stevens’ Northern Pacific Railroad Survey. He gathered information and explored potential routes from 1853 to 1854, with the actual survey work for the road continuing intermittently through the 1850s, delayed by events like the Yakima War (1855–1858). The detailed survey and planning culminated in the road’s construction starting in 1859.
John Mullan began surveying for the Mullan Road in 1853, as part of Isaac Stevens’ Northern Pacific Railroad Survey. He gathered information and explored potential routes from 1853 to 1854, with the actual survey work for the road continuing intermittently through the 1850s, delayed by events like the Yakima War (1855–1858). The detailed survey and planning culminated in the road’s construction starting in 1859.
John Mullan began surveying for the Mullan Road in 1853, as part of Isaac Stevens’ Northern Pacific Railroad Survey. He gathered information and explored potential routes from 1853 to 1854, with the actual survey work for the road continuing intermittently through the 1850s, delayed by events like the Indian War (1855–1858).
Ft. Benton was never a military fort, but a Hudson Bay trading post at a point that is the highest navigable point on the Missouri River.
The road was classified as a military road to get funding, but it was intended as a way for settlers to reach the inland northwest.
https://trailresearch.org/topic/mullan-road/
GPS is not always reliable or helpful, especially in urban areas with complicated intersections and freeway interchanges. The instructions (with Siri and Google Maps) are often incomplete, confusing, or downright inaccurate in real time. Since I occasionally drive in NYC it’s a problem. For example, it happens every time I come to the GW Bridge/Cross Bronx Expressway exit off the Henry Hudson Parkway. The exit splits into three at the outset, and then the middle one splits again if you are getting onto the Cross Bronx, and the verbal directions are either wrong or confusing. I generally know where I’m going so it hasn’t caused a major problem, but it’s basically worthless or worse. It’s happened in other places as well at highway entrances and exits in unfamiliar places where it has caused mistakes.
Once when we were in Tucson we put in directions for some museum, and Google Maps took us literally 20 miles out of our way to some remote spot where there was nothing even resembling a museum.
GPS is not always reliable or helpful, especially in urban areas with complicated intersections and freeway interchanges.
==
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l5VbyvPCtg
We didn’t miss what we didn’t have yet. The overwhelming majority of us couldn’t even fathom what was to come in terms of near instant uinversal access to massive amounts of information anywhere, anytime. If you were to tell me back in say… 1995 that within the next few decades we’d all be walking around with extremely powerful computers in our pockets that could basically answer most surface level questions instantly with minimal effort I’d certainly believe it, but I may not have realized the full implications of it (but then again I might have as I did and still do have a decent imagination). Such future capabilities weren’t really that relevant at the moment.
The future hasn’t really exactly turned out as I imagined it might back in the mid 90s. Certain things were far more significant than I guessed and other things just never really came to pass or haven’t really yet anyway. I remember thinking/hoping that by now in 2025 we’d have highly advanced genetic engineering to the point that’d we’d have cured most diseases and extended people’s lifespans by a lot. I remember thinking that by now we’d likely have a pretty well established moon colony and would have at least sent people to Mars. Also direct computer-brain interfaces would exist. I think I envisioned the internet a bit differently, not really the all pervasive thing it seems to be in our lives, but something that was far more casually used.
Once when we were in Tucson we put in directions for some museum, and Google Maps took us literally 20 miles out of our way to some remote spot where there was nothing even resembling a museum.
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Someone dear to me put in directions for Hardy, Va, in Franklin County, starting in Alexandria. It took her to a Hardee’s in Fredericksburg, Va. She reset it and it took her here, there, and the next place on a series of back roads ‘ere she realized that she’d hit a setting which told the application to avoid Interstates.
Once when we were in Tucson…
I wouldn’t blame that on Google Maps. It was probably trying to find the quickest route to your destination. Since it’s totally impossible to get anywhere quickly in Tucson (I lived there for 2 years, I can attest) Google Maps most likely just gave up.
I thought the whole point was to GET lost…
…and then found again (hopefully all the wiser…).
Jimmy
GPS is not always reliable or helpful, especially in urban areas
A number of times people trying to get to my condo address have gotten poor GPS directions to another condo complex a half mile away. I have gotten calls from lost people: “Please open the gate.” There is no locked gate at my condo complex, but there is a locked gate at the condo a half mile away.
I have driven from Texas to New England without a map. IIRC, I have also hitched cross country without a map. I-80 from SF to Chicago, then I-90 to New England. Easy Peasy. Following are some anecdotes about getting from one place to another.
When I was five we spent the summer at our grandparents’ house in OK. They lived in a small town with about a thousand people and a small central business district –post office, department store (long since closed down), drug store, IGA grocery. I walked all over the place, never having a problem with getting back to my grandparents’ house. When my seven year old sister walked by herself, she got lost. Guess that my spatial sense beat her greater age.
When I was 7 I figured out how to walk a quarter mile through the woods—crossing a small waterway and a dry ditch—to the post office.
I got a bicycle for my 9th birthday. On one foray, I rode past a friend’s house onto relatively unfamiliar territory. After a mile or two—maybe four miles from my house—I realized I was lost. I rode on, either crying or near tears—but did not turn back—until I had the good fortune to arrive at the state road that connected my school and my house. That experience showed me that maps are useful. My parents gave me sensible instructions that I religiously followed: back roads and the state route are fine for riding your bike, but stay away from the US route.
In the days of Internet maps but before GPS, my sister on the Mass North Shore printed out a route from some Internet site which she said would save me money on Mass Pike tolls—driving overland to I-495. I found the instructions very difficult to follow. I navigate more by landmarks than by “drive 2.4 miles..” In any event, the attempt to save Mass Pike tolls was penny wise and pound foolish—saved a dollar or two—as my sister lived several miles from I-95,north of 128.Much easier to have taken I-95 to 128 to the Pike. Oh well. (A hometown friend got a job in Boston. One time between her parents’ house and Boston, she got a speeding ticket on the Mass Pike. Her brothers’ reaction: “You got a speeding ticket? On the Mass Pike?” As I had observed speeders passing on the shoulder on the Mass Pike, I shared her brothers’ incredulity.)
Regarding the video discussing using the Internet to find out celebrity information, I am reminded of seeing on the Internet a 1948 photo of Marilyn Monroe, before she became a blonde. I was amazed at the resemblance between Marilyn Monroe and my aunt at her 1948 wedding— a year younger than Marilyn. I asked my cousin if she had realized the resemblance between Marilyn and her mother. Yes, came the reply. Both Marilyn and my aunt died tragic deaths before they turned 40.
I remember thinking/hoping that by now in 2025 we’d have highly advanced genetic engineering to the point that’d we’d have cured most diseases and extended people’s lifespans by a lot.
Nonapod:
Me too. However…
AI guru Ray Kurzweil, whose projections sounded insane 25 years ago, called the current AI explosion with astonishing accuracy. He now predicts that with AI humanity may achieve “longevity escape velocity” (LEV) by 2030.
Which means that medical science will be extending human lifespan faster than we are aging. Which means …
_______________________________
Do you really want to live forever?
Forever, and ever
Forever young, I want to be forever young
–Alphaville, “Forever Young” (1984)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNjQXmoxiQ8
_______________________________
So hang in there, friends. One never knows.
I am capable of getting lost even WITH iMaps telling me what to do. The problem is especially bad at the beginning of the route. “Proceed to the designated route,” but which way do I turn to go there? I have absolutely no sense of direction. I now wear an iWatch which at least tells me what direction I’m facing. I never knew before. My Eagle Scout husband knows which direction he’s facing without any outside assistance.
Huxley, I don’t think I want to live forever, and if I did, I wouldn’t be young again — which has its good and bad points.
Kate, you may be one of those people who hates it when others try to tell ‘em what to do, where to go, etc. Especially when they have creepy, fake but super-confident voices.
(I’m like that—sometimes I can’t take it anymore and get lost just to spite them…).
In any event, it looks like Adam Schiff—yeah, him—also has a bit of trouble with directions….
“Adam Schiff Faces Federal Criminal Referral Over Alleged Mortgage Fraud”—
https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/07/15/adam-schiff-faces-federal-criminal-referral-over-alleged-mortgage-fraud-n4941775
Couldn’t happen to a nicer
guycreep…I once missed the entire state of Arizona, but I found it again.
I also drove for more than 40 years without a phone, which my younger relatives can’t even imagine.
What’s that? Forty years in the (Arizona) desert?
You mean you were there all that time and didn’t know it?
(That would appear to take “mirage” to the next level…)
No, Barry, it’s not a rebellious nature in my case. I quite literally don’t know which direction I’m going. If I have the roads clearly in my memory, and the turns, I’m okay. When making a turn in unfamiliar territory, I will almost always make the wrong choice. I lose my car in parking lots. It’s the Eagle Scout I live with who hates lots of people telling him what to do. He objects to the female voice on the GPS.
Back when our kids were “little,” the family joke used to be “It’s not a family holiday if we haven’t been lost at least once.” And driving in the nearest major metropolitan area was always, “the festival of the U-turn.”
I’ve always had a pretty dodgy sense of direction…my wonderful wife has proven a very capable navigator.
Google Maps is location broke. At least when it comes to small businesses.
I think the Woke/PC era since 2020 has seen them indulge their radical employees elsewhere, thus failing to track failed and closed businesses all over the map. And therefore GPS directions are so often misleading.
It takes a dedicated business vision focused leadership that “sticks to the knitting” — the core competencies that once made its search engine essential.
Maps. Paper maps. I love them and am having a hard time finding one for the greater San Antonio area! I always like to see where I am *in relation to* where something else (like downtown San Antonio) is. I hate trying to do that on a computer map or worse, on my phone. I used to love Thomas Guides and the AAA maps.
But more than the map question, I find myself wondering, what the heck did I (we) do when we were say, watching something, saw a person and thought, “where have I seen him before?” Now I can go to the web, find the person’s name and see what else he/she has been in. I have no recollection of what I did “back then.”
Or, you hear a news story about another country and want to find out where it is, maybe a bit about its history. Did I used to go to the library? I went to the library a lot with my kids, but I don’t remember going just to look up some random fact. It’s weird to me that I have a hard time remembering this. I didn’t get on the web until the early 2000s, and I was in my 40s, so it’s not THAT (terribly) long ago.
I’ve always liked to just go down that road just to see where and what, sometimes you do get lost, make sure your tank is full. If I’m going from point A to point B, for a definite purpose, then I always try to map it out first, make a note of landmarks or major highlights.
Gas station maps. Still have a collection of them. Closest thing now is state maps at interstate rest areas. Remember before the interstates were built (or were being built)?
“Lost” is when you can’t find your way back; didn’t know where I was often enough but never lost.
https://ace.mu.nu/archives/415673.php
==
Remember that Democratic pols have one object: that they control the gates to anyone’s objects.
As a kid I enjoyed the frequent Bugs Bunny gag:
–Bugs Bunny, “I know I should have taken that left turn at Albuquerque”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8TUwHTfOOU
Bugs has emerged from a hole he has dug and is staring at a map, while wondering how he ended up at the South Pole or Spain or in a cave.
The story goes that Chuck Jones, the Looney Tunes animator god, often drove from LA to the Santa Fe Opera. The turn he missed is reputed to be at 4th and Central here in sunny Abq.
gwynmir – When I was growing up, I went to the library a lot. But to look up those small random facts, I went to my Dad’s home office (the library) and looked at the globe and the encyclopedias. We also had lots of other books of great lit, poems, plays.
Now, I would say that most “modern” homes do not have their own reference books anymore.
yes, those cartoons were classic,
that would see to have been a really big miss, since santa fe, is two states away,
the old dictionaries like one my grandfather picked up in spain, has some of the old maps, that one can fill in the blanks,
I had a bigger book collection down in South Florida, which we either donated or had to give up,
https://www.thesun.ie/tech/15542942/nasa-super-earth-flashing-signal-tess-water-red-dwarf/
I miss hard copy encyclopedias. And I have a real dictionary saved from my college years. And a thesaurus.
Brian E,
You can say that again!
huxley and miguel,
And lots not forget Johnny Carson as Art Fern, “take the Slauson Cutoff…”
Rufus T. Firefly, apparently it was so good I couldn’t say it enough!
I kept pasting that paragraph into the comment window, but nothing was showing in the window. Even if most of the paragraph was pasted below the window, you would think at least one or two lines would be visible.
I should have checked my comment, and could have caught it, but I was in a hurry to get to a rental and clear a blocked sewer line to the septic tank. The joy of being a landlord.
Anyone missing hard copy encyclopedias can get them very inexpensively since so many libraries have got rid of them over the years. Growing up I had World Book 1974 and a few years ago I got a set of World Book from about ten years later, for very little.
Can’t imagine a world without maps. Who would want to hear those dreaded words when asking for directions “You can’t get there from here.”
FWIW, my state offered a free paper state map on one of its websites, and mailed me one after a couple requests.
*giggle* I drove from Athens (taking the car ferry at Patras to Brindisi) up through Italy (over the Brenner Pass) across Southern Germany, across France, and half of Spain (and several summers driving through Northern and Southern Spain) with the aid of a map atlas of Europe the size of a small telephone book. I usually had it open on the passenger seat next to me.
I did get lost trying to get out of Rome, though – had to appeal to a couple of locals, for directions to the Via Salaria, which was the way north. And when I drove through France, I didn’t want to pay for traveling on the toll road/highways. I worked out a route for the day, memorizing all the names of the small towns along the small secondary roads, and hopped from town to town, looking for the directional signs to the next town at the various crossroads and roundabouts.
I’ve loved looking at and reading maps since I was a little kid. It culminated in a small collection of official state maps that states give away at their rest areas. 32 states down, 18 to go…
Great video.
I’ll give props to Rand McNally for finding directions and for researching general trivia, Almanacs were handy.
I love paper maps. As mentioned above, the AAA triptics were great. Once in Spain, we were driving from Almeria to Jerez, had a new map, and south of Sevilla
we came to the end of a highway, still being built, nothing but dirt, causing a lengthy detour north to Sevilla, then south toward Cadiz, and finally Jerez de la frontera. That’s once in 20 years. Still use paper maps, although I’m too old for long distance drives.
@ Jimmy: ” … The exit splits into three at the outset, and then the middle one splits again…”
We don’t travel over that many new interstates anymore, but I am seeing this type of “exit ramp” becoming more common — one “real exit” with several “sub exits” coming off of it. If you don’t realize that is the arrangement it can be pretty easy to miss your desired turn, but if you know this layout is coming it can be easier to exit off of a busy interstate. Just have to realize your “exit” is 2 to 4 miles prior to when you would expect to reach the applicable mile marker.
Explaining this type of exit arrangement to someone traveling to your location who has not been there before or had experience with this can be a challenge.
When we were stationed in Germany several decades ago, I was impressed with how they had graphic map or path signs indicating 3/4 circle turns or other possible travel paths at round abouts or other major highway intersections. Usually readily understood with just a quick glance. Given some of the spaghetti concrete loop de loops and flyways we now see, such map signs might be really helpful.
Just don’t forget: the map is not the territory. 🙂
”…I am seeing this type of ‘exit ramp’ becoming more common…”
It’s called a collector-distributor. It’s used when there are multiple off- and on-ramps in a short distance so that the resulting weaving motion is pulled off the main highway. That keeps the main highway flowing at speed and reduces the speed (and thus severity) of any crashes that occur. FYI.
mkent, yes, those are kind of neat. At exits 3 and 4 on free I-90 in Albany, there’s a collector-distributor. That’s right where I join up with 90 each day. It’d be much more useful, I think, to have it at exits 6 to 6A more toward downtown because there’s frequently an accident there in the morning, but creating one there at this point would be quite difficult.
The more you know, the more you know that there’s lots more you don’t know.
We’ve long known many folks are uncomfortable with uncertainty, but also that a huge amount of useful or interesting info that is known, to others, is not known to you. (Unknown knowns! The fourth quarter like #3 unknown unknowns)
Comfort with not knowing is important for a happy life, tho doubt about everything is bad.
https://www.freyaindia.co.uk/p/why-we-doubt-everything
We often go from knowing things, to speculation about what we don’t know. Like, we now know Trump’s tariffs did result in big income to the govt, and not much inflation (yet?). But this true news is not so emphasized as the speculations of so many Econ experts that tariffs would lead to big inflation. The demand for truth about the future far exceeds the supply.
Ai can mostly tell us the unknown knowns, we as individuals don’t know, but it is known. But in April, tariff based inflation was a known unknown, with the news accurately saying some expert speculation which turned out to be wrong.
What company bosses want is true speculation about the future based on going left or right, a decision. Accurate maps can resolve this in fixed geography, but the future is not fixed.
The more I write, the more I want to write about the related stuff not written about.
But it’s so much work, maybe Grok can help do it for me.
Whats wrong with his methodology?
We have occasionally depended on GPS with unfortunate results, when it thinks there is a road where that is not true.
Perhaps all the computers have been hallucinating for more years than AI is now famous for.
My favorite direction from “the locals” to the lost is the man in Illinois who directed AesopSpouse’s parents trying to find the old family farm, which was go down the road a piece and turn left where the old schoolhouse used to be.
(PS I HATE this font without serifs, where the capital I and the small L look the same. There is an almost-imperceptible thickness to the I that makes it wider than the l. Good luck seeing that without a magnifying glass.)