To use a GPS or not use a GPS

The GPS is fine but take a decent map. It's not just losing the signal (which happens everyplace including in our home driveway); it is the GPS being programmed incorrectly. I think of the peoples' driveway we ended up in three times one spring in France, and being sent to the wrong address in our own town recently. There are programming mistakes because all of this is input by humans and humans make mistakes. There is the famous case of a couple last winter lost in a blizzard because their GPS was programmed incorrectly and they survived by eating some energy bars they had taken along. The local joke is, "don't forget the energy bars" when someone says they are using their GPS.

GPS has improved over the years but we still take a map. It is very useful to find things you might want to visit in the immediate area. The GPS is zoomed in on your immediate area but the map lets you see what is in the surrounding area and is great if you are looking for places to visit or just want to see what is around you. No towns for the next two hours and you're hungry? Better stop now. The GPS won't tell you that but a map will.

We also take our own GPS in addition to the one that comes with the car we lease (or occasionally rent). When we arrive in a large town or city and park, I get out our GPS and set the parking place as HOME and tuck it in my purse. That way no matter where we wander in town, we can find the car when we're ready to leave. Some acquaintances of ours forgot where they parked in Florence and it took them hours to find their car. They found it a rather frightening experience. I don't think it would bother me that much, but it would be a time-consuming nuisance and if you have your GPS, it won't happen. Update: We've also discovered Google Maps on our smartphone is a great help. On a recent trip to England it was often overcast (or pouring rain) and our GPS couldn't find a satellite. Google Maps on the phone had no trouble at all so we used it for directions. The combination of the two worked well for us. We also used it once at a large airport. We'd followed GPS directions to the point where it told us to turn left and there were several left options. About the third time we circled back to this spot, I realized I could use Google Maps and zoom in on the intersection to see which left turn we needed. It worked and we found our car rental return. So now we take GPS, smart phone and maps.

Here's another reason to take a map along. One very cloudy week in Belgium, our hand-held GPS could not locate a satellite. We fortunately had a GPS on the car which worked and our trusty map, but we kept our own GPS on just to see how long it would take to find the satellite. The last day of a 7-day stay in the country it finally found a satellite and came to life . . . in exactly the same place we'd been trying it all week. It was a nice clear day!

We are never sorry to have our map along. It is particularly important when you don't speak the language because way out in the hinterlands, people may have a second language but it may not be English . . . or Spanish . . . or Italian . . . or German . . . or whatever it is that you speak. With a map, you can all just point and find the right road.
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