As someone who grew up in a time when a good map was a travel necessity, and the AAA Trip Tik was king, a GPS is a little difficult to trust. First, there is having to put in your destination. Where to? It asks. You begin typing in an address and then it kicks it out because you didn’t have the right state. Then you have to figure out how to put in the right state, and start all over again. Sometimes there are two locations that show up the same, but you know darn well neither of them are where you want to go. The whole process is time-consuming and we are constantly x-ing back for misspelling or whatever. It doesn’t give you a whole lot of confidence that this will get you where you want to go. Then it becomes reality.
There have been times when we have been traveling to a location and our RV GPS goes crazy. One time, we were headed to Emerald Isle, NC, for example, and there was a period of maybe 20 miles where the GPS had us travelling across a bridge down into some river flats and it then just went off road and was spinning in circles. Another time, we were driving to a campground and the GPS told us there was no highway and it had us driving for miles through a field on the screen, but we were actually on a highway. It really gets unnerving when you are driving along in this no man’s land and a body of water suddenly shows up on the screen, but there is nothing of the sort where you are driving.
We eagerly anticipated turning into the Plymouth Visitors Center as we wound through the narrow streets in our RV, following the GPS navigation. Then finally, the voice declared, “You have arrived.” But we were on a road outside of Plymouth with the ocean on our left and trees on our right. After a half-hour, and both of our phone “Maps” aps, we actually “arrived.” How about the time we had been driving far longer through North Carolina and into Virginia hoping we were coming to a nice relaxing campground at the end of the day? The excitement built as the GPS proudly stated, “In a half a mile, your destination is on the right.” A half mile later, the GPS declared, “Your destination is on the right. You have arrived.” The destination was an abandoned (I think) camping trailer sitting among several junk cars, trucks and tractors.
Sometimes, however, the good old map is also not quite the answer. We were about half way on the hike when we came to a clearing. The trail map kind of left out a connecting path back to the Visitor’s Center. I was trying to figure it out when along came a lady driving an ATV. 80 year-old Camp Host Dorothy Cogswell was at our service. I told her we were trying to find our way back to the Visitor’s Center. Like something out of the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy pointed and said, “Well you can go that way or you can go this way.” I answered “this way.” So she told us to hop in and she would take us to the entrance of the trail because it was quite a distance. Herein is something no map or GPS can do—human interaction and kindness. That will show you the way every day. Map or GPS? Nothing says you’ve arrived like a real person.
