Two sides to every gadget

During the Labor Day weekend, I and my wife took another one of our fun short road trips. This time we went to Upstate NY up to Warwick.
  In my previous post I wrote about how GPS can Tell you how to get to places, though on this trip I realized another dimension to having this gadget on a trip. Here is what happened:
  On our one-day trip we visited several wineries for some wine tasting, went to get ice cream at Bellvale Farms Creamery (which I highly recommend if you are in those parts as ice cream was really good and so was the view ..see pics in photo album), and went to a drive-in movie, they do still exist. After the movie, we were going to stay over in northern NJ as it was late and we have been driving for awhile. We plugged in the address into GPS and off we went. However, about 5 minutes into the trip, were were interrupted by the road closure on main highway we needed to take. It was flooded and/or had construction after the storm. We thought, "thats ok, we will just point the GPS to build a detour." And after some recalculation, it did. So, as we got so used to doing, we followed its directions. It turned out that it was taking us another way but to the same highway that was closed. We turned off the road again going in opposite direction, again hopping that the unit will find a detour. Once again it was leading us to the same highway, now from a different direction. To add a kicker to the situation we were also running low on gas. So we circled around the neighborhood for a bit, looking for a way out, as though we were in a labyrinth of some kind. Then we decided to take a pause and regroup as we realized that as smart as GPS seems sometimes, it was not going to help us out.
  After starring at it the GPS for awhile, I started moving the interactive map on it. And that is when it dawned on me. We can use the map within the unit in less advanced way and find the side streets manually that would take us to our final destination. With my navigator, ie my wife, following the route we came up with, we made it out of the labyrinth and to the gas station, and at last, to the house.

Why good to have on a trip: 
- Great for navigating to new destination
- Turn by turn direction
- Can be used as a map
- might lead you out of labyrinth


Warwick trip Photo Album