Getting Directions

Discussion in 'Gadgets & Tech Talk' started by Cody Fousnaugh, Mar 22, 2017.

  1. Cody Fousnaugh

    Cody Fousnaugh Supreme Member
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    What do you use to get directions to somewhere you have never been before or only once?

    Some new vehicles today come with a GPS in the dash.
    Some use a map book.
    Some use a GPS that is mobile.......can be used in different vehicles.
    Some write down directions on paper and follow that.

    For us, it's our iPhone 6s and, when on a trip, a large map book. Use to use a mobile, boat and vehicle, small GPS, but only use that in the boat. However, now we have an iPhone App that acts like a Plotter on the water. Our iPhone has never been wrong, but sometimes the direction the lady gives aren't shorter than ones we know, but we still use it. On the iPhone, we will go to the website, if there is a website, of the business we are looking for and push "Directions" with a finger and that will take us to Google Maps and directions to where we are going. Sure wish there was an iPhone when I worked years ago. Would have been so much easier than using the old Map Book.
     
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  2. Yvonne Smith

    Yvonne Smith Senior Staff
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    You are totally correct , @Cody Fousnaugh ! I remember when I sold life insurance, and we had routes that were in several states, and all of the little towns in each state, plus the back roads. Some of the places I had to find were just little dirt roads back in the hills, and I was always hoping that there really was a house up there when I got to the end of that road.
    Having an iphone with a GPS app would have been wonderful back in those days ! I had state maps for the state I was working in, and then usually went to the courthouse (or someplace that sold them) and also got city and county maps for the area as well. I saved all of my maps because it helped me the next trip into that area six months later when I visited people in each town again.
    We did sometimes have directions on the front of the renewal cards; but those were not always correct, or the person had moved; so tracking them down was part of the job for me.
     
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  3. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    GPS was just beginning to be common in ambulances when I left the field, but I can think of a lot of times when it would have been helpful. I have a Garmin that I use sometimes but usually I use Mapkin, and Mapkin rarely lets me down.
     
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  4. Patsy Faye

    Patsy Faye Supreme Member
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    I still use me head Cody - only have to go somewhere once and up to now, can remember the route
    This gift sure has been handy over the years as Fabs would be 'lost' in the wilderness :p
     
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  5. Cody Fousnaugh

    Cody Fousnaugh Supreme Member
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    Yes, I remember back when I was in EMS and had to use a map book, along with a small flashlight (at night) to read directions on where to go. Fortunately, my partners pretty much knew the city/cities that we worked.
     
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  6. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    We had to pass a maps test before we could drive, in which we had to name the streets and roads on a map in which they were not listed, with 80% accuracy. Where things really got complicated was when we were providing mutual aid to somewhere outside of our service area, such as Brownsville, Texas. Brownsville not only had streets that were broken up into isolated stretches of a few blocks, but it also had streets that had the same name, with different designations (street, road, drive, avenue, boulevard, lane, etc.).

    On one of my first calls, in a town I wasn't very familiar with at the time, I was dispatched to a house that was said to be on a road with a name that wasn't on my map, and told that it was about a half mile past the old Gonzales farm. On the map, the road had a number rather than a name, and "the old Gonzales farm" didn't mean a thing to me. Was Gonzales old or was it the farm that was old? Was there even a farm there anymore? Or we'd get directions that referred to cows that were supposed to be in a corner field. What if the cows were in the barn? Eventually, I got the dispatcher to give us addresses that meant something to those of us who didn't grow up there.
     
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  7. Ina I. Wonder

    Ina I. Wonder Supreme Member
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    I got pretty good at using a Keymap through the years. Big Mike use to have a key map library that our whole family would check out before any trip. I recently gave it to our local county library. They said that with today's GPS's, it was getting harder and more expensive to locate and provide old maps to the public for recent, (this century), study. They told me Michael's collection would provide a good map inventory for copying.

    Big Mike started the collection back in the '60's, and it was one of his interests right up to his last days. I never thought I would miss stumbling over the columns of rolled up maps.
     
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  8. Holly Saunders

    Holly Saunders Supreme Member
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    I rarely ever use a map..although I do have a Satnav in my car.

    Some people have talents of various degrees.......My talent if you want to call it that, is that I have an excellent sense of direction. Unless something is well and truly hidden away, my inbuilt brain sat nav will guide me there...whether negotiating back streets in a strange city...or driving abroad... I rarely ever get lost.
     
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  9. Von Jones

    Von Jones Supreme Member
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    I never travelled outside of the city unless it was with my mother until I met and married Johnny. My desire to learn north, south, east and west on a map was worth it trying to impress him. Although he knew his way back to his hometown in Arkansas and the highways and byways of the interstates we always got lost in the city when he was behind the wheel.:D

    My son gifted us with his old Garmin and that threw him off completely with his 'I know where I'm going' and its repeated 'recalculating' response at every wrong turn he made.:D

    Anyway, I like the Garmin but it has to be updated. It cost me $80 the first time I updated it and I got a message that it needs updated just this past week when I was trying to find a CVS and it turned out to be a Dollar General.:eek:
     
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  10. Holly Saunders

    Holly Saunders Supreme Member
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    The sat nav (garmin) drives me crazy Von... I always find it wants to take you the longest route regardless of how you set it... I think, no way Jose... I'll go the route I know, and it will take me much less time, and use much less fuel...

    My husband who has a terrible sense of direction uses the sat nav in his car all the time in built one, I don't know the make ...and I keep telling him to ignore it and go the way I tell him, but he'll always follow it, and then tell me I was right after all..
     
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  11. Von Jones

    Von Jones Supreme Member
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    Lucky you for getting told you were right.;)
     
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  12. Holly Saunders

    Holly Saunders Supreme Member
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    Oh yes he's quite good at admitting I was right on most things...but like most men..he'll NEVER admit he was wrong...lol
     
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  13. Terry Page

    Terry Page Supreme Member
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    I have used a TomTom sat nav in the car for years, the Live version is useful because it monitored current traffic speed on your route and would offer a change of route if it found a faster one.

    These days I use Google maps in walking mode on a smartphone all the time, to find places such as tourist attractions, places to stay and restaurants etc.

    I do have a good sense of direction and can find places I have been to, or memorise them from an image in my mind after looking at the route, and I never lose the car when I park it in a town foreign to me, but I would miss a sat nav these days.

    I haven't used paper maps for decades, never really got on with them....
     
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  14. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    I have a Tom-Tom and a Garmin. The Tom-Tom was nice because it came with a buzzer that would let me know when I was speeding, but it would often try to send me on routes that I knew to be wrong. From our camp near the Canadian border, it would persistently try to tell me to cross the international bridge into Canada in order to get back to Millinocket, a few hundred miles south. In other places, it would simply try to send me off on another path that would be longer, and it would know it was longer because once I ignored it, the Tom-Tom would recalculate and give me an arrival time that was earlier.

    The Garmin is far more accurate, although it seems to drop me off sometimes in a place that is near where I am going but not within sight of where it thinks that I am there. The Garmin will monitor my speed and the posted speed, but it there is no alarm to let me know when I am speeding.

    So, I usually use Mapkin. I will use the Garmin sometimes because Mapkin seems to drain the power on my iPhone pretty quickly.
     
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  15. Chrissy Cross

    Chrissy Cross Supreme Member
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    I use my iPhone but not often, I usually know where I'm going. Especially in Fresno, it's one of those easy cities that's like a grid and you can tell just by the street address where you are...numbers go up as you go north and go down as you go south.

    So if someone says the address is 1200 N. First street...I know that won't be a great part of town. It's hard to get lost in Fresno.

    Only time I've needed to use my iPhone for directions was when I'm watching the grandsons and they have some activity to be driven to that's in another town, like a basketball game, etc...

    When I go to my daughter's, even though I could do it blindfolded I still put her address in my mapquest just in case of a detour...some are way out of the way.

    Last time I went through a town called chowchilla and without my iPhone I'd probably still be there. I'm bad at finding my way.
     
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