Monday, July 15, 2019

Landmarks, Street names or GPS?

My youngest daughter ONLY navigates with her GPS which I think is questionable. However, I grew up in a completely different era almost 50 years different than her too. I only went to a private school my senior year of high school and she has been in a private school since she was 7 years old. So, this tends to create many differences between us in the actually 48 years years between us in real time. From her point of view my conversations are vague and not specific enough. From my point of view she goes into such detail in each and every subject that nothing can get accomplished. But, somehow despite all this we love each other and do our best to try to communicate.

I was taught originally to navigate from landmarks from my grandfather and father. This is helpful if you are a backwoodsman like they both were so you don't get lost in the woods and die. So, you really have to be careful in a deep forest with no useful landmarks but trees. This is one reason why often you will see a chip out of the bark along trails because the first people did this so they wouldn't get lost. By chipping a piece out of each trees bark you won't get lost going or coming with no good landmarks in a deep forest.

But, if you are in a place where you can set your eyes on a good landmark or set of land marks this is the best.

In cities some people like to combine landmarks with street names. I do this some too but prefer landmarks because they are easier to remember. If you are going to use street names you might want to write them down in your "notebook" section of your iphone like I do. You could also do this with landmarks as well, even if you are in airplane mode to save electricity on your Iphone (or other smartphone). (When out of range your phone will search for service and use up electricity unless it is in "Airplane mode) or off by the way.

So, if I'm in an unfamiliar area or city I use GPS on my phone too to navigate. However, mostly I use the red lines of traffic to find alternate routes much more than I ever use my Smartphone for direct navigation. So, for me, mostly it is to find where the traffic is so I can find another route that is quicker at that point during the day.

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