The GPS is an amazing device - most of the time. I thought your quirky GPS experiences were caused by operator error. I owe you an apology; it’s easy to be lead astray by technology.
We recently spent a couple of nights in Athens, Ohio and decided to take in a few of the sights around Hocking Hills. At one point, we needed to get from Ash Cave to Lake Katherine. After carefully loading the destination address, Abigail (our GPS) came up with the standard four choices for routing: fastest time, shortest distance, least use of freeways and most use of freeways. For the first time, we realized that we always pick the fastest time and never understood why anyone would ever pick the other options.
We were miles from the nearest freeway so we decided “let’s go with the shortest distance and see what happens”. I should have known something was up, you could almost hear the excitement in Abigail’s voice – I think she was saying “boy oh boy oh boy, this is going to be fun”.
We started on a very nice, straight and perfectly acceptable US highway. For some reason, Abigail went quickly to a state highway, then a county road, then a township road and….. I don’t know what the roads are called after that. I’m not worried – we’re still on the map as far as I can tell.
“Turn left on Bushy Rd, turn right on Caves Rd, veer left on Goose Creek then straight on Savageville Rd. for .6 miles, then left on Skunk Hollow and right on an unnamed road” – no kidding. And the whole time, Abigail is just as cheerful as can be – she’s having a great time leading us up, down, around, through and over. Where are we?????
In the meantime, the other woman in the car, who happens to be driving, is definitely not happy. I never lost confidence in Abigail (not aloud anyway).
After an hour of this, we somehow end up on US 35 - just a few miles from our destination. The rest of the trip was definitely less exciting. I’ve written to Garmin asking them to change “shortest distance” to “as the crow flies”…
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1 comment:
My son had the same problem in Hocking Hills area. My gps seemed caught in a loop on a couple of occasions, once in florida and once near a freeway entrance ramp near the Dyaton airport that was closed. I went around and around in circles several times and then realized the gps was being a bit loopy, not me.
still the gps has been a godsend for this directionally challenged jafa bird.
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