GPS vs. MAP

I like to drive.  I also like to go a different route on the way home than I took on the way there.  Life is too short to take the same way twice.

I've always been a map person.  I like the physical paper nearby to check - just in case.  I was never a AAA member, so their popular 'Trip Tix'  was not an option for me.  But in the late 1990's, I discovered Map Quest and my life became a little simpler.  I did a little research, entering the beginning of my route and my destination, pressed print and viola!  I had written turn by turn directions that included a map.   I didn't need to buy one of those GPS devices and attach it to the dashboard of my car.

Ten years later, when I took a road trip to Florida with my son Paul, he insisted on using technology from his phone for directions.  Thank God, I still threw the printed directions into the car as he lost his 'signal' several times in the mountains and we were driving blind.  Paul did have some cool apps on his brand new 'Droid' that he was excited about.  He would take a picture of a building in a town and his phone would tell him where we were.  It didn't work everytime, but it was fun to try.

Now it's ten years after that and I find that I am now relying on my phone to help me get to where I want to go.  It is still not always right.  It doesn't know all of the 'back roads' that I like to take so in the end, I rely on my own sense of direction - in the evening, if the sun is in my eyes, I must be driving west, and so I will eventually get to where I need to go.