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The No-GPS Road Trip (popularmechanics.com)
Ezra Dyer, a reporter at Popular Mechanics, decided to ditch the GPS system he has on his car and the mapping service on his phone to see how hard it could be to go to North Carolina from his home, Louisville, Kentucky. He shares his experience: I begin downtown, by the river. It seems that if I get on 32 East, I can find Route 150 toward Tennessee. It takes about one block for my plan to fall apart. The street I'm on dead-ends and forces me onto a seemingly parallel road that soon wanders off at an angle. I discover that there's the fancy, Kentucky Derby side of Louisville, but also the Thorobred Lounge gentleman's club side. Somehow, I blunder onto Interstate 264, a ring road, where the exit numbers indicate that I'm at least ten miles from where I thought I was. And yet, it works out. See, this is the way you used to do it. You keep driving. I exit for Route 32 and settle in for a long drive east. I aim to make it to Knoxville by dinner without having any real idea of whether that's possible. It doesn't help that my atlas crams all of Kentucky onto two pages, printed with fonts evidently developed by those calligraphers who can write the Magna Carta on a piece of capellini. So I stop at a gas station to buy a local map. There are none to be found, so I pull into the next gas station. Then a third. In my mind's eye, there are metal racks at every gas station, over near the door, stocked with maps. Well, those don't exist anymore. I don't know when they disappeared, but they're gone. "Try Walmart," says one cashier, as if I could find it. About an hour in, I'm in traffic-clogged strip-mall hell, stoplights to the horizon. The upside is that I have no concept of time. Instead of compulsively checking a screen to anguish over my plight, I drive. I'm curiously peaceful. I can't do anything about the traffic, so I exist in it, placid. And eventually it gives way, the stoplights dissipating into lush Kentucky countryside. The Defender is happy to amble along at 55 mph, so amble I do, down to Route 150 toward the Tennessee border. Read the full story here.
That's basically how I still do all my road trips. Get out the paper maps!
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
No GPS, only maps? Are you insane? THAT'S A SUICIDE MISSION!
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
there was some kinda of paper navigation tool you could fold up and keep in the glove box. Or perhaps even a book of said previous things.....
Imagine, no cell phone either and if you broke down on the road, having to walk to find a pay phone (which no longer exists)
Yeah, this was reality less than 20 years ago. wow, Millennials, the generation more out of touch with the past faster than any previous generation in existence. This goes along with the guy who "found" "free tv" using an antenna the other week.
If shit every really does hit the fan and we start living in a post-apocalyptic world where tech no longer works, Millennials will be the first batch of people to just simply die off.
Check out the other articles in this series:
"Going to a Restaurant Without Consulting Yelp: Can It Be Done?"
and
"Watching a TV Show without an Aggregate Review Score: One Man's Odyssey"
True think-pieces for our age
Back in the 80s my family moved over a thousand miles away for dad to go to school. We were AAA members, and my parents visited the local AAA and got a TripTik. It seems they still have them (at least in name - seems to be an app or something now), but back then it was a linear map that was bound at the top. You would flip through the pages and the roadway you were to take was always oriented up / down along the paper. They would custom build it for you, inserting the appropriate sheets into the booklet, to get you to your destination. Then of course you could follow it backwards for the return trip. I remember they even manually highlighted the route, and would mark areas of construction on the map. They would also show points of interest and good places to stop.
Here are some pictures (random sources off the internet that match what I remember):
https://img0.etsystatic.com/00...
Fold out detail:
https://yearofadventure.files....
Here's one that's been stamped marking an area where delays might occur:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_-2gf...
Better known as 318230.
The biggest thing is that maps don't have traffic info, which can be fantastic. Also new construction.
Also, there are some really funky interchanges, like near me there is this weird interchange where 4 highways and two local streets come together in a very small area and it's actually a bit difficult to make out on a map and see how to get through it and end up on the right road at the end. Turn by turn usually saves me having to take the next exit and come try again when I see that I misunderstood the map the first time.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Around 2000, I spent over a month one summer driving around the US with camping gear, a stack of AAA maps, AAA books for each state listing campgrounds, and no plan other than to see interesting things like national parks. I drove around 10,000 miles. Most mornings, I spread out a map on the picnic table and figured out where to go that day and where I would be able to sleep or shop if necessary. No GPS and a basic analog/digital cell phone that kind of worked (analog, $0.69/minute roaming) in most non-mountain areas. It was an unforgettable experience. It's a shame if newer travelers are unable to experience some of these things.
As the driver found out, USA atlas with 1-2 pages per state should be in the toolkit purely as a backup map. AAA still has good state-level paper maps that are usable for everything except in-city driving and are good for trip planning even with a GPS.
On most trips, I still try to carry the state-level maps and usually use them a couple of times for something. I have yet to see a good way on a small-screen phone or GPS to answer questions like "how far away is the coast," or "how much out of our way would it be to go to that town" or "what's the next sizable town within 2 miles of the road we are on," which a glance at a paper map answers. GPS will tell you the closest town but it may be way off your route.
I do think GPS has been a big benefit for safety. Reading maps while driving was never safe but often necessary before GPS.
So you do the same thing you should be doing with your phone: you pull over, put the car in park, and pour over the maps until you figure it out.
If you think it's tough in a car, try doing it in a plane sometime. In that case pulling over is not such a trivial task.
Meh, "North" is only important if you are using the technology that the GPS displaced - the compass.
Look everyone, millennials thinks GPS replaces compasses.
if only there were a way to tell which direction was north without some sort of device....
"His name was James Damore."
...did a road trip become rocket science that requires a computer?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Although I do all my road trips mostly using my phone maps, I always carry an atlas of the U.S. when driving and have had to use it at times when I visited some small cities far from the highway and had to go on to new destinations I could not look up...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...for decades. I'm 70. It works, but it sucks. Basically you have to read the make, MEMORIZE your turns, and then go. On interstates, that'll take you a long ways, but in town? Forget it, you're going to have to stop after a while and memorize the next set of turns if it goes on too long. Then of course there's the question of whether this is the right turn or is it the interesection that is 200 feet up the road. Signs? Signs? We don't need no steekin' signs.... yes we do, but if they're the size of a postage stamp, it matters with a map, not so much with a GPS. And then there's the signs that are big enough, but have 6 trees growing up around them and are covered with a poison ivy plant yet to boot.
Driving has always been an adventure, but we don't have to get silly about it. Use the GPS...
Speaking of 'paid for itself'. Just a couple of months ago I was on a trip with someone in a rental car. He was driving, and is one of those 'GPS knows everything' types. Anyway, we're driving along and the GPS says 'keep left'. I said, 'you need to exit to the right'. He listens to the GPS. Happened two more times. We get to our destination and he is gloating about how the GPS was right and I was wrong. I say 'just wait'.
About a month later he calls me up - he is irate because he got a bill from the rental car company for fines that had been billed to the car. Seems all those times he listened to the GPS and stayed left he should have been listening to me and going thru the cash toll plaza. Had $150 in fines for toll evasion, and expected me to pay 'my share'.
I'm old enough that I have used maps. Reading them is the easy part. the hard part is getting the !@#$ things folded up and put back in the glove box. Nobody I knew ever managed to do that right!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Not that long ago (a bit more than a decade or so) Cars didn't have GPS. Long before we had them at all, I used to drive regularly from Detroit to DC and Texas. I could even make it back from those destinations! :O
When I moved from Detroit to CA, I planned my route with maps and drove based on my instructions with maps as a backup. I can tell East from West by looking at the Sun, so I can tell if I'm going the right direction. All of this stuff used to be 2nd nature to people. Now I have to read about some person's heroic effort to travel about 500 miles? Really?
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Ever been halfway to your destination when "Satellite signal lost" is heard over the speaker? Then you miss an important exit in the time it takes the GPS to regain signal and re-calculate? This happened several times for me, along with the realization that I was becoming more and more directionally challenged by relying 100% on GPS. I still use GPS to this day. But you know what? Usually before you click the 'guide me with your sweet voice, robot lady' button, the GPS app (google maps for me) plots out a course on a map for you that is zoomable and superior to any written map. I take a few minutes to analyze the route, using my brain to plot out the course and making notes of possible alternative routes. This way you have the course in your head, you can still get there if the GPS signal is lost or the app crashes, you are still exercising the part of your brain that modern humans should keep, and you can rely on the GPS lady until things go awry.
I recommend all humans do this, you never know when you will be without a GPS device in your hometown (or even farther!) trying to get home. Its a basic survival technique, and I have learned over the years not to let basic survival techniques be lost to technological dependence. (e.g. know how to use CPR, and don't expect to be able to look up on youtube 'how to perform CPR' in an emergency)
Also: If you live in America and you are going from one state to another, you don't really need GPS, or a map to get there. The roads are numbered according to orientation, the signs are aplenty leading you to the next major destination. If you are in New Mexico and want to go to Denver, just follow signs for 'Pueblo' then follow signs for 'Denver'. Its probably the most user-friendly road navigation system ever created.
My wife and I grew up using maps, and it's quite natural for us. I often use GPS especially for traveling, but my wife is resistant to using GPS, they steer you into lakes and lead you astray, etc. When I get online directions or use a GPS for long distance travel, I almost always check out the route to see if it makes sense. I often modify my route for a multitude of reasons such as; I know a different route is actually faster, construction I'm aware of, a different route is much more scenic and therefore worth the extra time, I know this route actually doesn't work, a new road not known by the map software and other misc. reasons.
I recently went to a Best Western Hotel in Wisconsin that had been there for over 15 years. When I keyed in the address when I got near by (I used maps to get to the area), the address didn't exist on my GPS and I couldn't find it searching around. The road actually had 3 names, and I knew 2 of them, but neither worked on my GPS. I'm not sure if the one I didn't know would have worked, but I ended up calling the place and getting directions. It was still tricky to find, yet right on a major 2 lane highway.
Following turn by turn directions on a GPS often aren't quick enough to get to the right side of the expressway for an exit in large downtown areas with many exits and moderate traffic.
I hate it when GPS and online instructions tell me to get on a certain road going straight down the expressway, over and over again, when it's the same road I'm on or it combines with another one and no turning is involved. This is why I often transcribe online directions into something one eighth as long as the original.
Ultimately, I never want to be without a GPS and at least a state map if I can help it.
Blogger/Reporter admits he is slightly retarded. Too retarded to follow street signs, but not retarded enough to crash his car in the process.