Mapquest is truly one of the biggest gifts of the Internet–when it works right. In the past I have trusted it only to be lead through every backroad in Bloomington IL, when the hotel I was going to was right on the main road. And my inlaws trusted it to find our house, and wound up two exits past. So, I KNOW not to trust it completely, but being me, yesterday, I took off on a two hour trek with no clue where I was going except those three little pages supplied by Mapquest.
You can probably tell here this didn’t work out well.
Actually, it wasn’t HORRIBLE, but I did spend an extra half an hour searching for an exit number that just doesn’t exist. There is no exit 128 on highway 151 in Wisconsin–make a note of that. On the plus side, I do now actually own a map of Wisconsin. I’ve only lived her seven years, as you can tell I like to fly by the seat of my pants at times.
Luckily, I had left early so I was still at the book signing well ahead of schedule. There was a low turnout, but the community relations manager really had things set up nicely–Starbucks coffee, cookies and Godiva chocolate. And a number of women from WisRWA showed up to support us. So it was a fun day. Also, I found a copy of Stolen by Kelley Armstrong–the last of her books that I haven’t read yet, and got a really good latte for the drive home. (I think there can be a lot of variety in the quality of a latte, so when I get a good one I’m pretty darn pleased.)
So, lesson for the day–don’t trust Mapquest. Use it, but don’t trust it.
Lori
The way I read maps it might be better to go with
by Robyn February 13th, 2006 at 9:44 amMapquest anyways. LOL.
lol!! Yeah, Mapquest can get interesting.
We use Microsoft Streets and it’s a lifesaver. Anytime we’re going somewhere new, my husband prints out maps of the area from it. Like we went to Des Moines this last week, so we had a map of the greater city area, a closeup of one area we were heading to, another that had the hotel and a mall, then another that had the other mall we were headed to. Worked out great when we missed a turn as I could check out the map and figured out what streets we needed to go on to get back to our hotel.
I think DH likes it because then he never has to ask directions.
by Nicole February 13th, 2006 at 2:17 pm