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Or a road atlas? I always do, because I love maps and could never switch to using GPS, except for urban driving. I love to make unplanned detours on the spur of the moment when driving on vacation, and using a map gives me a good overview of the areas around the road I'll be driving along.
Yes, I have a 2017 road atlas tucked between the driver's seat and the center console. Hardcopy maps come in handy even though I often use GPS on my phone. The reason I have no plans on giving up on maps is because GPS acts "special" sometimes. It will randomly send me on a detour me through a residential area for about 2-4 blocks then put me back on the main street that I was already on headed toward the destination. I checked to see why that happened but found nothing. There was no road work or construction going. It was GPS acting possessed. Another reason I'm always glad to have a map is because GPS will say that the signal has been lost and then it spends the next 10 minutes attempting to re-route my trip. What am I supposed to do during that time, pull off the road and park?
Although I can't a really close zoom-in effect with my road atlas, it's still good for orienting myself to look for major roads, hwys, and interstates. I also have some individual state maps that I've picked up at state Welcome centers over the past few years. I love maps and planning road trips looking at the map imaging with sights I might see.
Absolutely. As already mentioned weak signal is one issue. While I often examine location / geography online via google earth, I do not use gps and don't care to have it. I have had a 'reconnaissance mindset' since I was a child and love maps and try to memorize them as I always felt it keeps my mind sharp.
I don't use the maps in my car much anymore unless I plan to travel somewhere out of the norm, but the biggest plus in my opinion of paper / book / atlas is scale. Problems with determining relative location in relation to other areas is lost on small screens. And just being led with directions without seeing the larger visual picture annoys me as I tend to always want to see a larger extant for context, which most hard copy maps provide in a handy format.
It is also why I value the AAA membership highly due to the ability to still get hard copy maps of a geography I may be traveling too. I was a former road warrior in a past job and learned that even with gps there were errors in directions when I used gps. My approach was always let me see the whole scope and scale and I will figure it out. My pet peeve are those stupid tourist maps that distort scale to fit.
I sometimes think in a 'past life' I was a surveyor / explorer since I love maps so much and that I get pleasure from drawing up fictitious ones as a way of doodling.
Oh yes! I am a geography buff and enjoy looking at a map and seeing what is in the area. My car is older and does not have GIS and I do not think I would use it even if it was available. I prefer maps!
Yes, for those times GPS vomits some weird route or wants you to turn off of a bridge because it thinks your car is on street below and to know the scale of roads and towns.
i do. always. and I use them too. i love maps. And atlases. i am old school. I like to see the big picture. i dont like to rely on electronic gadgets. too many ways for them to be inaccurate. I don't feel oriented properly until i see the perspective from an actual map.
same thing with books. i will not read from a tablet. i want real books with paper pages.
Yes, we love maps and use them on all of our trips. We don't have a GPS or phones, so maps are essential, though sometimes I do free-hand sketches of Google maps on blank paper the night before a drive so we can have a tentative itinerary, and so I can embed routes and street names (and potential stops) in my mind. Maps make driving fun.
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