Is it possible to be lost in 2008?
As a prequel to my soon to be posted review of the Magellan Roadmate 1200 GPS, and coming off of two road trips Dawngrrl and I took over the past 5 days, it occurs to me that it’s nearly impossible to be lost in 2008 as long as you are equipped with inexpensive and highly available technology products.
It’s kind of crazy if you think about how far it’s come. In 1997, a little over 10 years ago, the GPS unit was about 12″x12″x4″, weighed in at about 5lbs and displayed a very difficult to use pair of coordinates for latitude and longitude.
Fast forward to this year, and on our road trip we had four of such devices with us the smallest of which was embedded in my cellular phone. A chip I would be surprised if it was larger than a dime.
With this gear in mind, I wonder if it’s possible for a person to be hopelessly lost in 2008. The really interesting part is the change in your frame of mind when you travel. We left to drive all the way around Olympia National Forest and didn’t bring a map or any directions to where we were going. Let’s start with a little background on the pre-trip ritual.
We began our trip decision making process with a combination of Google Maps, Google Earth, Weather.com and Flickr. We knew we wanted to take photos, so we started by looking on Google Maps for towns and parks located along the path we had decided to take. With those in hand we turned to Flickr.
Many people might not think to do this, but if you are scouting a possible vacation spot, even one abroad, go to Flickr and search! You will quickly find the most scenic and beautiful places as they are obviously the most commonly photographed.
Once you have done that you can check each place for potential weather problems and peek Google Earth to see just how big the towns really are.
With a list of Port Angeles, Lake Crescent, Ruby Beach, Amanda Park and Astoria Oregon in mind, we set out on Friday late afternoon and typed in our first destination into the TomTom One XL conveniently stuck to the window via suction cup. It calculated our route and we were on our way.
Approaching Port Angel that evening, Dawngrrl grabbed her Internet enabled HTC Mogul Windows Mobile Smartphone and quickly found a hotel in Port Angel and we altered our destination to it’s address.
I won’t bore you with the details of our entire trip, but we were able to locate scenic areas, scout them, and drive straight to them the entire weekend. Not only were we not lost, we were so enabled that we drove out across the state with zero trepidation and the utmost confidence that we could find whatever we wanted and navigate there as simple as you could ever hope.
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