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Road Trip or When You Need a Good Map

© Dorothy Hill

I've know T- for years and years, and it is because I know her that I knew the directions to her new home would leave a whole lot to be desired. Directions that included landmarks such as the BP station and the white church named something Baptist would not get me to her house at anytime in this lifetime--at least not in Mississippi.

Now I'm as adventurous as the next old lady, but, when it comes to traveling the whole length of the state of Mississippi to see a friend who doesn't have a phone and who lives in a trailer park off a county road in a rural area that shows up as a blank spot on my road map, I want more explicit directions. The word "LOST" kept coming to mind as I planned the trip.

I'm not a Luddite (I just threw this word in to impress you.), nor am I a technology guru. But my upcoming trek into the blank spot on my road map cause me to "let my fingers do the walking" to find help on the Internet.

Imagine my surprise when I went to MapQuest on the Internet and typed in her address at the trailer park and up popped a small detailed map showing a bright red star where she lived. At that point the focus was very narrow and I had to zoom out several times before I found a major road and a town that was on my road map. Each time I zoomed out, the red star remained showing me where she lived.

In addition, imagine my further surprise when I discovered she lived twenty miles in the opposite direction of where she had led me to believe. I might still be riding around today looking for a white church named something Baptist near a BP station and slowly being swallowed by the blank spot on my road map if I hadn't checked the Internet for better directions.

I used MapQuest because it was on the home page of my local ISP, but a quick search turned up other mapping services. Yahoo! Maps uses the MapQuest maps. Microsoft Expedia Maps allowed me to zoom in and out as the first two but would also move the map in any direction allowing me to follow a road back to a main highway. You have to register to use Maps On Us. I didn't bother since I already had what I needed from the other sources. CyberRouter listed the road name that I needed to know which made it easier to follow the road back to a major highway. I like how I could zoom in and out and also follow the road back, but it did not include exit numbers. Exit 16 was much easier to look for that night in the dark than the road's name on the sign. While the services could give me exact directions to take, none chose the route that seemed easiest to me.

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