Don't trust your GPS blindly!!! A word of caution! :D
Hey friends, I just returned from 17,000 miles living on the road this summer. The greatest thrill of my life! I rotated between three or four different cars and people but most of the time I had a GPS and I would like to give some advice there. It was my first time in using a GPS and I will say that it is a nice thing to have in that it will tell you near by points of interest you might not find. However, beware to anyone making a cross country travel, if you are not having a 4 wheel drive it will often take you on little back roads. One memorable occasion was at 2 in the morning in the middle of nowhere Utah, the GPS trying to take me down literally an unused endless dirt road to get somewhere right off a main interstate, so unused in fact that there were weeds growing up so high it got all stuck up in the bottom of my car. This in a small car that does its best just to get moving. Because of that I ended up spending the night in a remote rest stop literally in the middle of nowhere. I always sleep in my car on road trips but in truck stops so this freaked me out!
Another would be in nowhere New Mexico trying to get to an alpaca farm in Mora again that is right off a highway... it decided to wind us up a one lane dirt road going up the side of a small mountain area... Lucky that my fiance is from India and used to such things so he had the idea to keep honking the horn constantly to alert anyone on the other side to avoid a collision lol.
The other occasions were going winding back roads all across Maine only to find myself at a closed road just a few miles from the destination, some times without a detour.
Anyway just a word of warning, GPS can be a great luxury, but always stick to your maps as back up as we should know. Most maps are clear enough to mark which routes are 2 lane highways, off road, etc, so check the direction the GPS is taking you in and make sure your car can handle it. Often there's a main route and it is only a few miles longer that direction.
HOWEVER.... one nice alternative the GPS does provide here is the back roads you will see are 90% of the time more scenic and of course so much more refreshing than main highways. My main word of warning is just about dirt roads for cars that can't handle them! Especially at night where there is no cell phone reception, not a good place to get your car stuck! :D
Never Leave Home without a Good Paper Map
I use GPS for map-making projects, but I'd never navigate solely by one. Paper maps are much more interesting and they provide little known detail about little roads that you might want to follow. GPS machines have been responsible for way too many deaths and inconveniences because roadtrippers have used them without using their brains.
Thanks for the cautionary tales!
Glad you had a great adventure.
Mark
Wholeheartedly agree......
Hello the_escape,
Glad to know you had an excellent adventure, and a safe one.
While I'm far from being a Luddite, I do retain a healthy dose of skepticism concerning "GPS only" navigation, be it on land or on the water. In fact, I simply will not rely solely on GPS. I am fond of saying "there is no COMPLETE substitute for maps and the refined ability to read them".
Some 8 months ago, the daughter of one of my skiing friends, herself an exceptionally bright, determined, and self-sufficient young woman of 27 years of age, ventured from our Park City, UT base of ski operations to visit her brother, who was working the ski season at Jackson Hole, WY. She drove up in daylight by the route she'd driven some time before. Her return, two nights later, was after a day's skiing in the midst of a heavy snowstorm (which ultimately dropped over a foot at Jackson Hole). She was anxious to get back to Park City and foolishly punched in "shortest route" into her rental car's GPS. She then foolishly followed the GPS directions onto a little-used National Forest road which was gravel beneath the deepening snow cover. Fortunately, she stopped before getting stuck, turned around, and retraced her path until she got a cellphone signal again. She called her Dad, and with his help figured out where she was (not that the GPS didn't indicate, but it was difficult to determine the best way out), and returned to the main highways. The overnight temperatures fell to below zero F that night--probably certain death had she gotten stuck and run out of fuel.
And unfortunately, as noted by Mark, this kind of thing happens regularly. It's so easy to avoid, too, with the most elementary application of common sense and map-reading skills.
Foy
