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Yes, I believe I read that somewhere. I believe President Reagan ordered it after an aircrash where a civilian airplane got lost and ventured into hostile USSR territory and was shot down or the like, he ordered them to deploy GPS so they wouldn't be subject to that same sort of catastrophe again.
Yes I've seen that and that also is the sort of thing I'm talking about, faulty design or laziness in making things CLEAR to people. Granted wilderness roads are secluded roads, but if you're going to bother with roads, well then again do it RIGHT. (Also, again, the Grand Canyon may be the wilderness, but it's also a hugely popular wilderness.) Snow can't be helped, but if it's to where you have a hard time making things out even in daylight and even with no snowfall, then it's lazy and/or faulty design.
Besides that I've seen things even in the city that were dumb, such as two separate roads way on the other side of town having the exact same names. Who does that? What kind of nonsense is that to name two separate roads way on the other side of town the exact same names? Where did they get their traffic engineering or street design degree, from a matchbook or a box of Cracker Jacks? Then, on top of that, sometimes the same road will change names simply because it changes direction, but it's the SAME ROAD. Other times the street address numbers on the building are so small you'd have to get a NASA telescope to see them (to me they should be so large they're visible from the moon with the naked eye, almost anyway). That also is nonsense.
Don't make things needlessly difficult, it's one thing for someone to want their hand held and it's another thing to rightly point out that mother nature can't be helped and that the wilderness isn't Disneyland but it's also very reasonable for someone to want the design and such to be to where things are not so murky.
"1998 Vice President Al Gore announced a plan to make the GPS satellites transmit two additional signals to be used for civilian (non-military) applications, especially to improve aircraft safety. Congress approved the plan (called “GPS III”) in 2000."
And how would a regular map have helped them any different? Also, if it was a true walking path that they drove down, I doubt the GPS told them to drive down the walking path. I've used a GPS for the past 10 years all across the country and it has yet to instruct me to drive down a walkway. I stand by my point that this family has the common sense of a sun baked rock and it had nothing at all to do with the GPS.
It's both. We explore back roads from time to time, and would have mapped out the route ahead of time, on google and our Rand McNally Gazetteer. We would have programmed GPS, and also followed the paper map. We would have made sure the route on the GPS matched what we'd mapped on google and the paper map. And we probably wouldn't have attempted this after a snow storm in any case. The north rim of the GC is not all built up and touristy like the south rim. We would have checked with the park service to make sure the roads were open and passable, too. I doubt they did any one of these things, let alone all of them. Stupid.
Several times I've been held up by people who just blindly trust their GPS w/o giving any thought to where they're actually going. A couple times someone searched by the name of a restaurant, and went to the wrong location. Another time someone navigated to north instead of south whatever street and made a whole group of people 45 minutes late. It's just inconsiderate and avoidable.
"On Dec. 22, they set out on what was meant to be a day trip to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon."
From the very first page of the National Park Service Grand Canyon website (https://www.nps.gov/grca/index.htm): "The North Rim of the park is closed for the winter and will reopen on May 15, 2017 for the 2017 Season"
"The North Rim has a short season (May 15 through October 15)
Winter visits to the North Rim :
There is a day use period - with limited services - beginning after the lodge closes on October 15 and lasting until December 1st, or when snow closes highway 67, whichever happens first. At this time the North Rim is Closed for the Winter.
Even though it is not possible to drive vehicles to the North Rim during the winter, hikers, snowshoers and cross country skiers are able to enter the North Rim of the park through the winter months, provided backcountry permits have been obtained. Personal snowmobiles are not permitted inside the park. The North Rim reopens on May 15 of every year."
HOW MUCH CLEARER DO THINGS NEED TO BE?!!! Even the most cursory research would have told them that the trip they were planning was impossible for anyone other than very experienced outdoorsmen.
(And the North Rim of Grand Canyon isn't the only park that's inaccessible to the general public during the winter months. Far from it!)
Use to be lots of odd stuffs...15 years ago lots of routing that failed. Today virtually none. I think the last time Google maps mis-routed me was four or five years ago. We often deal with new homes where paper maps are hopeless. Google maps though is pretty good. In fact it is sometimes too good and routes through a street not quite finished.
I also find nowadays I use Google maps on routes I know very well if there is any possibility of high traffic. For instance I often show homes in a tract on the back side of a substantial local hill. There are two ways out...longer way from the back much shorter way from the front...but the short front way can be very congested. So ask Google Map to route it. Works very well.
Use to be lots of odd stuffs...15 years ago lots of routing that failed. Today virtually none. I think the last time Google maps mis-routed me was four or five years ago. We often deal with new homes where paper maps are hopeless. Google maps though is pretty good. In fact it is sometimes too good and routes through a street not quite finished.
I also find nowadays I use Google maps on routes I know very well if there is any possibility of high traffic. For instance I often show homes in a tract on the back side of a substantial local hill. There are two ways out...longer way from the back much shorter way from the front...but the short front way can be very congested. So ask Google Map to route it. Works very well.
Completely different than a remote location in winter.
The mother had taken survival classes and explained she had no way of melting snow and did not eat it because it would have accelerated hypothermia, which makes sense.
Its not hard to melt snow without eating it or chilling yourself. All you have to do is expose it to something that is above freezing in order to melt it. Put it near enough to your clothing to melt and warm it before drinking it. There are "survival" techniques that would have demonstrated how.
A lot of us remember them. I had a GPS then, and I wasn't exactly tech savvy. I also went out in the woods prepared for anything I could imagine might possibly go wrong.
There is such a thing as "having a backup plan" for when the technology goes wrong or gets damaged too. I have many outdoorsy friends who use GPS, but they also bring along a MAP, compass, and research the area before they go. A dead battery, wet or salt water damaged electronics, software glitch, no reception, all things to assume can happen at the worst possible time.
There is such a thing as "having a backup plan" for when the technology goes wrong or gets damaged too. I have many outdoorsy friends who use GPS, but they also bring along a MAP, compass, and research the area before they go. A dead battery, wet or salt water damaged electronics, software glitch, no reception, all things to assume can happen at the worst possible time.
Not really workable anymore. You can print your own maps but in a decade or so it will no longer be possible to buy them. And maps and compass are no where near as accurate as a gps in many circumstances. Simply flat snowy country or heavy forest and you will not be able to get anything resembling an accurate fix. As I said before GPS we would sit for 5 or 6 hours outside some harbors. With good radar it might have been possible to safely enter...but with much better compasses than any hand held we knew better.
Better a second GPS. Or even a primitive one to go with a map. Or even a third.
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