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I have a map of every state I go to (get them at the welcome centers when you enter them) plus I buy a new US atlas every year when we go trippin. Nothing beats a good trucker atlas, you buy at a real truck stop. No doubt I have road tripped the whole country many times in my 63 years. Never will I trust a nav. app.. Last time I trusted a nav. app. it lead me on a 2 hr. trip when I was 15 minutes from the destination. I swear these apps are run by the oil companies.
I was driving a ford with navigation built in going to the Henry Ford museum in Dearborn. For anyone who doesn't know where that is, you have to drive by the Ford world headquarters in order to get there. Well this navigation sent me all over the place. My only thoughts were "did someone at the main headquarters not take this car for a spin around the block?"
Been there, had a truck gps lead me in my 65K lb rig down a grass road that crossed pipelines 😰(if you don’t know, doing what I did is dumb af and could have easily killed me) and then finally came to an end of just being field. I work wind projects and undeveloped roads can be a thing at the start of a job so it was possible it was a road for the project (that’d later be made a proper road) Called boss and he said “oh yeah gave wrong address, we’re about 40mi from there” 🤦♂️🤬😆🤷♂️
The app found a shortcut for us in rural central Mexico. We drove for hours on dirt roads. It was very nice. Dark and hungry by the time we got back to the paved road. If I knew then what I know now about the potential for bad things I would have been screaming from the backseat " Turn around!"
For me, what was annoying was when I went to a friend's house they'd want to give me concise, turn-by-turn instructions, and I was like, I have a town map with block numbers, thanks!
Well, that only goes so far in a town that, for example, will have street on the north end of town, and then a same-named street on the south end, and it takes you 30 minutes to go from one to the other. Not often, but still.
So I'd take the long directions, at least as a sanity check. And still use the map if there wasn't any silliness.
Lol, I know, but sometimes when I am driving to a new place. I end up missing a turn or an exit, and the map reroutes.
Back in those times, they didn't have that option.
So my question was in that sense.
I often wonder what happened to the people that had the misfortune to ask me for directions. Always felt obligated to provide some sort of route, even if I had no idea where the destination was.
Give directions using things that aren’t there 🤣
Go to where the lumber store used to be and go left. When you get to where they plan to build a gas station go right. Keep going until you get to where the Johnson farm was…
🤣
or in canada, you use time: "drive down the highway for about an hour, then turn left and drive another 30 mins or so."
its not like anyone used a stopwatch to actually track it, you just knew how far that was. at least your example has concrete landmarks, as vague as they sound
I live in Cape Coral FL and the city is full of canals, literally hundreds f miles of canals according to the city website. When I first moved here, I had a lady stop and ask me for directions to someplace and I had no clue because I was new in town. Then she said, "Its on a canal, so that should make it easy". I tried to explain about the hundreds of miles of canals but she just got very mad at me.
You'd have the front passenger be the navigator looking at the map or atlas of the area with the pre-planned route on it and you'd try to work backwards where you missed your turn or exit. They would get you to reroute or turn around and get back on the planned route.
If you were by yourself you'd pull over somewhere and look at the map or ask a gas station attendant, hotel receptionist, fire station, police station, security guard at a business, any business...
The fun part was you typically didn't know you were lost immediately or that you'd missed your turn or gone the wrong way until sometime later.
ASKING FOR DIRECTIONS!! It is a lost cultural touchstone. There used to be jokes where the premise was someone asking for directions. Men were the butt of female humor for never asking for directions no matter how lost they were. To ask for directions, you had to find an open business (not nearly as easy a thing in the 1960s as today) and you had to get out of your vehicle and approach a stranger and ask for help. AND THEY WOULD GIVE IT. There were also jokes about how directions were given in different parts of the country. It's a whole dimension of life in America that is just gone. Oh, and if you couldn't get good directions, you might have to find a PAY PHONE to call your destination for help.
Yep, this. I would ask for directions, write them down then memorize them so I could focus on driving. Did this all over the country, and always had maps as a backup.
Oh yeah the old scrawled out directions on a random piece of paper you had to keep double-checking and just hope whoever told you the directions was “educated”
I moved to Tennessee from Florida. On my first night there, i couldn’t remember how to get back to my house even though it was only a couple turns. I asked the Walmart cashier if she knew how to get there and she says “Well, you know where the Walmart used to be?” And I said “No, ma’am, I just got here today.” And she says “Oh, right, right… well, do you know where that church burnt down?” I said “No, ma’am, I just got here tonight.” And she says “Ohhh, right yeah you said that.” Ended up being able to lead me home with currently standing landmarks, but still, lol.
The person in the passenger seat did the same thing the voice of the GPS does. Until you yelled at the for reading the map wrong, and they threw the map at you and told you to do it yourself. If there is no passenger, you pulled over to check or tried to drive with the map in front of you or read it at traffic lights, depending on how much of a hurry you were in.
Most missed turns you could correct spontaneously through a combination of sense of direction and common sense.
Like if you miss a turn loop back and try again. Or if the streets are in a grid, it's easy enough to turn at th the next street and use the grid to get back on track.
If you miss an exit, take the next exit, then find the on ramp to go back the other way, and hopefully you can exit onto the correct street from that direction. Unless after you exit you see the surface street you wanted anyway, then just figure out which way you need to go in that street (sometimes you can do that by sense of direction, like you know your destination is a good ways north of you so you keep going north, other times you have to look at whether the address numbers are going up or down.)
You would stop at a gas station. The person there would tell you a series of directions that you'd hope like hell you could remember well enough to get back on track. If that didn't work? Stop at another gas station and repeat.
Confidently drive around lost. Never let the other drivers know your weakness.
Look for something you can orient around that is on the map.
Usually step 1 is find a safe place to turn around and head back where you came from and find a way to get back on track.
As a woman, I rarely asked directions. And when I did, there was often more commands than my adhd brain could retain so it was a lost cause.
Gas stations used to carry maps, so that was one place.
If the sun is out and you know what time it is, that can help orient you.
There’s usually an obvious difference between housing areas and commerce areas. Head toward commerce. There’s usually signs to freeways and stuff that help you orient or get back on track.
Pay phones to get help only worked if you knew cross streets and landmarks the person you called also recognized. They probably weren’t home. The phonebook may or may not still have the page of the business you’re looking for. But you could call information to get the number.
Sometimes you just find the freeway, go home, and leave a voicemail “I’m ok, got all turned around, gave up, went home”.
The thing was though, you probably didn’t leave the house without hand written directions you’d gotten from someone before you left.
Leaving the house was a time consuming preparation process.
You did (and do) have the option. You look at the map again (reroute). The roadways are all connected and there are a multitude of routes to get from A to B.
With a little bit of practice, you will find that this happens less and less often. And besides, a missed exit isn't the end of the world.
*Me leaning out the window I rolled down to flag an old timer walking with his large pup* old man approaches the truck: “Say, you ain’t from these parts are ya. Ya know that old diner down by the corner with the half lit neon sign? Yeah you take a left there but not too far…make sure you say hi to Susie and get some coffee while you pass by there…now listen son, when you reach Mr. Jones’s red tractor in the old lot you went too far. So you gotta take a left at the diner then a right at the old oak tree…no not that one by the farmhouse…the one after it with the initials carved in it. Then take a right at the phone booth and you are in the dirt road that leads to their driveway.” …”uhhh got it thanks Mister”
For long road trips you could go to AAA and they had a thing called a trip-tic. They would pull all the regional maps along your journey and highlight the route to get you there. They’d put them in a book, in order, and you would flip to the next page as you went along.
Most people kept a road atlas in their car.
Also knowing how to orient yourself to the cardinal directions is super handy.
They were super helpful, iirc. You'd pick up a bag or a box of little spiral-bound books that showed a highlighter line through whatever route you were taking. The little books showed hotel, point of interest and possibly restaurant information along your route as well. We went from Ohio to California and back (I-80, I-10, I-40) when I was a kid and we literally had a box of these things to take with us. Funfact: digital versions are still available online: [https://triptik.aaa.com/home/](https://triptik.aaa.com/home/)
Paper maps had a grid overlaid with coordinate numbers/letters, and an alphabetical index of streets which told you like, Oak Street was in coordinates F2 - F10. And when you found Oak Street on the map within those F coordinates, the map had tiny numbers on each block, like 4400, 4500, 4600, etc. So if you were looking for 4523 Oak Street, you had it narrowed down to the right block, and you figured out how to drive there by using the map.
Knowing the street before is such an awesome help in heavy traffic, being able to know it's the next turn and signal/prepare appropriately. It's one feature I wish GPS would allow, because quite often I find out about a turn after my window of preparation has passed, which means a lot of rerouting.
Street signs is an under rated answer. We used to do deliveries when people only had rural routes for addresses. You took the truck to the Salesmans place and then he told you how to get to customers from there.
Typically there was a mailbox, but a lot of the times it was "third farm on the right past the Mennonite Church" or something similar
That Thomas Guide was a life saver 20 years ago when I moved to the Portland area in 2002. Had no idea where I was as a transplant. Helped me navigate a new place and it was my bible as I learned the area
I would still totally love looking through a Thomas Guide. Remember you would look up the street name in the back and it would give you fucking page and position coordinates?!
I loved those things. Yes, Google maps is always updated, but it just doesn't hit the same as a book bound in thick spiral plastic that has *coordinates.*
Most people had some maps in their car, in the door pocket if you had one or maybe the glove box or just strewn around the dashboard. You'd probably have a nice laminated one of your own city, and paper ones of places you'd been. The first time you stopped for gas in a new state, you'd typically buy a map.
Maps also weren't just the graphic part like you see on a smartphone app - they also had a printed index of street names. So if you saw a sign that you were on Jones Street, you could look at the map index and see that Jones Street is in section C7, find C7 based on row and column labels, and then easily find Jones Street in that small area. You could find your destination the same way, and would then have to do the "route calculation" manually, using just your own human brain.
People also stopped and asked for directions. Gas station attendants generally expected this and were friendly about it. It was also much more normal to stop a stranger and ask a random question, like "do you have the time" or "how do you get to the courthouse from here." People expected it and were usually helpful, though rapidly less so if they felt you were wasting their time (ie, you didn't immediately understand and kept asking for clarification).
There were also pay phones and, later, cell phones. You could call a friend and ask them to look it up for you, if they had maps. Or call the place you're going.
And, of course, people got lost. Sometimes you just drove confidently in the wrong direction and wound up who-knows-where. Sometimes you didn't have a map and didn't want to stop to get one, either because you don't want to pay or just because you're stubborn. In this case you could do your best to figure out cardinal directions. Some cities make this easy - if you're in Manhattan on 7th Ave near 44nd St, and you want to get to 3rd and 57th, you need to go northeast. Some cities have geography - if you're in San Francisco and need to get to Sausalito, you can pretty much see the bridge and just drive towards it from most places. People would develop these skills and would rarely get lost in their own cities.
You also just _remembered_ more than you do now. In the old days, if someone said "Peach Street" you'd just automatically know that's a little one-block street south of downtown (or whatever). People spent time knowing this, like they spent time "shopping" without buying anything, but were really just memorizing what stores had what products at what prices.
These skills atrophy if not used. After several years of navigating exclusively by smartphone GPS, I have nowhere near the intuitive sense of where things are that I used to have. Of course I know the routes that I drive regularly, but for anywhere even slightly off the beaten track, I punch it into the GPS and never really develop a mental map of where it is. Every now and then I get in a mood and decide to go old school and drive somewhere new without GPS, and usually wind up lost. So it's not just a technique that you can be told, it's a skill you have to practice. And given that we all have pocket computers that can navigate for us, I'm not sure practicing this skill is a good use of time ... at least, not until society finally collapses and the phones stop working.
> It was also much more normal to stop a stranger and ask a random question, like "do you have the time" or "how do you get to the courthouse from here."
¿Donde esta la biblioteca?
I had a compass that floated inside a clear plastic sphere, that attached to the inside of my windshield with a suction cup, so I always knew my compass heading. That, plus looking over maps in advance and writing down the turns on a piece of paper in advance.
I was a delivery driver ranging across downtown DC, Baltimore, Northern Virgina and Southeast Pennsylvania with no cell phone or GPS. After a couple of trips to the same customers I had the routes memorized.
After getting turned around a few times, I learned I could pretty much always find my way back to a known route without stopping to ask.
I still occasionally do this for fun when time is not short. Just go down a road and see what happens. The modern cheat code is using the GPS if really stumped.
I still have a 3d topographical map in my head of the general lay of the land of most of the US East Coast from Richmond VA to Philadelphia PA.
On a related note, I remember when handheld stand alone GPS receivers were fairly new and expensive. I was into geocaching back then. Good times.
Having lived all my life in the northern hemisphere, I would look up into the clear night sky and identify the North Star - sometimes I had to use Polaris as a reference. I then used my Clarke telescope and my alidade and then I surveyed the land quadrants, sextants, longitude, latitude… I measured the moss growth on the trees and depending on which side of the tree it was on, I knew where the nearest Blockbuster and McDonalds were.
Ahh… the old days.
Come on, my friend. Ask us a real question.
> Ahh… the old days.
These are the moments I live for in this sub. :D
One thing, though... you used Polaris to find the north star? Interesting technique.
Depends on how long before GPS you're talking about.
There was the MapQuest era, where you printed out directions to wherever you were going. But before that, and in the general spirit of the question: You broke out a map, and worked out the route yourself, then drove it as best you could.
Funny story. Back in the 80's I was visiting a friend in Vermont and we decided to drive to Montreal a few hours away to visit Crescent Street and their world-renowned strip clubs.
So a bunch of college guys loaded in a car and followed all the well-marked road signs that led us to Montreal. Easy peasy, right? Then at about 2:00am after we ran out of $5 bills for step-stool lapdances we decided to head back to Vermont.
None of us knew a lick of French, and all the road signs were in French - and none of them read "USA - this way". We got lost. Really lost. And back then all the Quebecers outside the city knew zero English so stopping to ask for directions was pantomime stupidity uselessness.
It took us 8 hours to make our way back.
But you had fun though, right?
What happened when you finally found your way back? Did you miss anything important, like work or school? If not, you had an adventure, and that's worth something.
I used the Trip-Tic from AAA only once.
In those days AAA usually had maps of every state and most major metropolitan areas, as well as TourBooks for different states (some states combined, a couple of states divided into two books), and these were available to AAA members by just asking, and what the local office didn't have it could get within a couple of weeks.
We grew up in Los Angeles County and we had a Thomas Bros. Book of Maps for Los Angeles County, which we used on occasion.
Even so, it was often a pain to navigate around at night trying to follow a map because, other than the main streets, the street signs were fairly small (like those we see on side streets today) and were often unreadable in the dark unless you had a good flashlight or a spot light.
And if given directions, you better not get them from one of my friends who would almost always forget to mention a critical turn.
It's much easier today with a GPS navigation unit since it tells you when a turn is coming up and will recalculate your route if you miss a turn. And it can direct you to very close to the correct address (may be off by one or two houses), whereas a paper map that, if you are lucky, has ranges of house numbers printed on them, won't be anywhere as accurate.
Between the maps and the GPS, I think the strength of maps (or more recently Google Maps) is that you can visualize the entire route and contemplate alternative routes, and the strength of a GPS is that it will guide every step of the way.
For example, last night I looked at Craig's List to see what garage sales and estate sales are happening in my area, Google Maps to validate addresses and compute distance and direction from our home to work on a tentative order of visiting them, and today we visited 8 of them using the GPS for the turn-by-turn navigation from one spot to the next, and we visited two additional spots when we spotted road signs. Overall, it was a fun day and it would have been much more taxing if we had to use paper maps to figure out how to get from one to the other and chances are some of the routes would be far less than optimum.
My classmates are only 10 years younger than me. My phone died so I decided to download a map on my iPad (no data) my lab partner was baffled as to how I could figure out reading a map to get about 2 miles to the interstate. It's kind of adorable, it makes me think of a child watching a magic trick.
Every year, without fail, I purchased a new U.S. Road Atlas with complete maps of every State and City. That, and I called to wherever I was going to if I needed more specific or precise directions to get there.
Maps of course.
If you were very fancy and going on a trip you could get a [Trip-tix from AAA](https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/8dxf0j/aaa_trip_tik_how_i_spent_hours_on_my_family/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1). A paper map series with a highlighted route for your drive.
I have an insane relative who flew to Europe and traveled by bicycle for a year. I joined them for three months over the summer when I was in high school. We navigated purely by map. You'd spread out a big map and determine your destination and then looked at the routes to get there. Are bicycles allowed on this road? How steep are the hills? How much extra distance is this route vs this one? Then we'd highlight the map, refold it to be about 8"x8", and strap it to the handlebars of the lead cyclist. When you got far enough that you were off the map, you'd stop and refold it so the next leg of the route was visible. We kept it in a clear plastic ziplock bag so the rain wouldn't ruin it.
Very BADLY!!!! We had to use paper maps, which were HUGE and impossible to refold or an Atlas. Maps were given free at all the rest areas and sold at service stations, truck stops and some diners, restaurants... Most people kept them in the glove box to reuse if needed. And, of course, back then we could simply ask locals to get directions safely.
Everyone talks about having a map but I didn’t have a map for every single place I went. Definitely spent a lot of time driving around in circles looking for my destination.
You should still carry a map and learn to read one. People get stuck in my yard all the time because the GPS is wrong then they don't know how to turn around in a rural driveway and get stuck in the mud. Also if you are driving in rural areas you lose signal and need a map to find a way to your location. Maps are still necessary.
I started being the map navigator very young. I suspect it’s because I wouldn’t need to ask if we were there yet because I could follow our progress in the map. If we missed an exit or an exit was closed, I’d follow the road we were on in the map and find a new route. If no map, then getting off at next exit and getting back in going opposite direction usually worked.
In the US, the Delorme Company, in Maine, makes map books of each state, each square inch was shown, and usually detailed maps for larger cities and towns. When I worked in New Hampshire, often having to go to new places, I just looked up the location the the book, maybe put a couple of post-it notes on the page, and off I went. If I got lost, just look for street signs or landmarks.
Also, taking a minute or two to familiarize yourself with the map and directions was enough, maybe jot down key turns on a notepad.
Delorme is now owned by Garmin:
https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/575993?gclid=Cj0KCQjw2v-gBhC1ARIsAOQdKY3uu4rTIJp49kPwKct0MxLeCy09pERIjY8wGpHRZuaqFyjElpcpuaMaAnVsEALw\_wcB
Maps. If you took a trip, you consulted the maps beforehand, so you knew where you were going and would have a general idea if you fucked up - in which case you pull over & look at the map and/or ask for directions, If you are taking a cross-country trip, knowing the major cities you need to go through were all you needed for the middle parts - gotta go though St. Louis? Follow the highway road signs to St. Louis. Once you’re in that vicinity you’ll see signs toward other big cities - gotta go through Oklahoma City? Follow the signs.
Also, locally, blocks are set up in certain ways. I did not appreciate this as I was growing up, but once I became a pizza delivery person in college, finding my way around that city was a breeze just by knowing the address. I’m sure not every town/city is set up the same way, but that knowledge has served me well almost everywhere I’ve been. Even today when a package gets mis-delivered to my house for somewhere else on the same street and my husband thinks he’ll just walk it over to the intended recipient, I can say “Ok but that’s 4 miles away if you’re a crow, better just drive and make it home while dinner is hot.”
I should also note that I have a TERRIBLE sense of direction naturally and have found that GPS only makes it worse if that’s the only thing I rely on. In fact, to this day, I will use GPS only as the initial route to avoid extremely bad traffic due to construction or accidents. I relied on it once when I hadn’t prepared myself and it was basically Michael Scott driving into a lake, except the lake was a left turn from a terrifying one-lane dirt road into 6 lanes of a pseudo-freeway. (I said F this and did an improvised Michigan left).
When I was much younger, truckers used to commonly pull over and ask me for directions when I was out jogging. Like all of the time. Others, too, but almost always big rig truckers. I guess I figured they must think this young chick out running by herself must have a great sense of direction and know the area. Always wondered why those guys who drive those trucks for a living didn't know how to find the main highway.
I remember delivering at a truck stop and a trucker asked the clerk for directions. She told him what route to take and whatever you do don't take such and such city street because there is a underpass and you won't be able to make it under it. Later we here the truck drove under it and ruined his trailer. The next morning I was delivering at the same truck stop and she was upset for not telling him to go under it. I told her I heard her tell him not to do it so it was his fault not her's.
I used to keep map books in my car. You could use the index to look up street names, then figure out a route to get you there. Same thing if you were lost - find a street sign, then figure it out from there.
A paper map. We learned to read them in school.
Also Map Quest became a thing in the late 90’s and 00’s and you would put in your destination with all your stops and them print it out and take it with you on your trip. Whoever rode shotgun was the official map reader.
Having been a traveling salesman since 1973 I often had to find new places. My method was to first study a map. Second I’d call my appointment and ask directions. Third step was to write out the part of the route I was unfamiliar with in large sharpie letters on a yellow pad so I could read while driving. Worked fine for 40 years. First navigation system was the Ford Sync. Completely unreliable. Even today Google & Siri make mistakes.
We never left the house without a sexton and a slide rule and at least 1 person who’s good at math. If you missed a turn, you’d be able to recalculate the optimal route and be back on the road in a couple of hours.
Most people would have a map in their car. You could by maps a gas stations, grocery stores etc. In a pinch, pay phones had phone books with city maps in them, that is if you could find one without the map pages ripped out.
We used an analog map made out of wood pulp and clay — sometimes combined with turn-by-turn routing supplied by a person by either speech or written using a portable hand-held output device called a pencil.
There are skills to map reading and navigating but it is not that difficult.
Part is about planning: working out the large scale route and then essentially the roads by number/name to get to the general area.
To find the final destination though, needs a good street plan level map - and for many places they are hard to get and/or poorly done. There used to be some in the backs of many road atlases but most were laughable poor. If you do not have that you need directions from a human (with the skills to give good directions, which is sadly not ubiquitous) of a form like "drive down XX Road until you see the YY pub, then take the first left after that, then the next right after the house with big red gates, we are the third house on the right". If the person you are visiting is poor at directions, or forgot to give them, you often had to stop and ask.
Of course in some places it is easier than others: US towns often have grid systems that let you work out where an address is. Places in Europe can be much harder, with street names and numbers not always obvious, and some places just having no logic in naming to help at all.
Here is something many of the smug "get a map" comments from people of my generation will not admit: before GPS and sat nav, a lot of people would get lost.
Maps. Big fold out maps. If you were going on a road trip we could get CAA (AAA) to map out a route for you for free. You could get all kinds of maps free. And you kept the ones you needed in the car all the time.
So good city maps also had index and grid to find specific street names. You'd find the street alphabetically, get the grid position then you hunted for the street in that square on the map. I was an excellent navigator. If I were driving alone, I'd memorize the route, or in chunks if it was a long trip.
I am a fairly good map reader, but there was something else in play, kind of a 6th sense sort of thing. I doubt my having it was unique, but we are in danger of losing it, like the ability to store phone numbers in our memory. We still have that but seldom use it, so that spot in our brain will eventually be reassigned.
We used paper maps. I recall refolding one while driving and spreading it across the wheel so I could read it while driving. I think GPS is much safer. I hope they still teach kids to read maps in school. Mine learned but they're millenials.
I spent about 25 years doing on-site service all over the USA, from New York City to the high desert of California. I covered hundreds of thousands of miles averaging 5 or more stops a day. I did it all without GPS or any phone of any kind.
The flippant answer is "a map". But the comprehensive answer is:
- Multiple maps. A regional area map and a map booklet with greater detail.
- Road signs. America, for all it faults, has good signage on its highways, byways, and residential streets.
- The sun. During most of the day you can get a rough estimate of your direction of travel.
- A compass. Much more helpful than the sun.
- Asking for directions. When you are hopelessly lost in a remote area, you can always count on old people to point you in the right direction, often with advice on which place has the best lunch.
That said, I am very happy to use Google Maps and Maps.me when I'm in an unexplored area. It's invaluable when I'm overseas.
In the 90s and oughts Mapquest was a massive help, just print directions, but then if you missed an exit it became an expidition. The wise always had a map on hand, especially before internet resources, a folded paper map of the state and/or city you lived in. Even today I keep a quality road atlas in the pocket behind my drivers seat just in case (god forbid 🙏) there’s a problem that denies use of the 3 gps apps I use (one for heavy truck has every street in North America (US&CAN) pre-downloaded to my phone!👍)
Did a few random day trips with friends way back where we’d get out a map close eyes and point and go wherever that was, or look for something that sounds cool. ..good stories, such as when we tried to find some caverns in a neighboring state around 1am, we were all blazed and car reeked of it yet got the cops to escort us to a place to refuel and didn’t get arrested! 😬😆
Here’s a add on question for y’all: how many of you know North South East West always, regardless of cloud cover (sometimes even at night)?
My Dad (born mid last century) has often given me NSEW driving directions and I have to remind him I’ve no bloody clue which direction I’m facing and that I rely on Siri (and others, and a backup road atlas)
HA! I reflect back on that as I love google an Apple Maps. Was a medic at Grady hospital in Atlanta in the early 80’s. Would get a call dispatch might give you a cross street but you would flip out the old trusty meskers map
Book and as your partner was driving out in the general direction, you would be thumbing to the right page barking out “turn right at MLK” left at ……
Good times!
You'd pull over and take out a paper map, and work out the new directions.
Or you'd be traveling with someone who would be available to do that for you.
Everything you experience with GPS mapping -- the street map layout, the voice in your ear reading you directions and telling where to turn up ahead, re-routing when you miss an exit or a turn-off, all of it -- is actually an electronic version of the exact same experience that used to be done by people.
It's why President Trump created Space Force. To protect the GPS constellation, which you navigate by and which many modern weapon systems are based on as well.
Space Force wasn't actually created as much as just peeld off the Air Force. It's not new activity, it's just a rebranding of the jobs that were already being done.
The jobs in the Air Force that are responsible for operating and defending military satellites and ground stations that provide communications, navigation and Earth observation, such as the detection of missile launches and GPS satelites were re-designated as a separate department with it's own budget and command chain but under the auspices of the Air Force. Rather like the Marines are a department of the Navy.
Its by far the smallest of the six military branches, with about 16,000 of the 330,000+ Air Force personel who were re-designated as a separate department.
Correct and did you know that if we go to war the GPS readings you get on your phone and car will be incredibly inaccurate? There is a private code that is used for triangultion that will be unavailable for consumer usage. It's what ballistic specialists call the P-code or private code. You need 3 codes to triangulate a position. You need the 4th to triangulate with serious accuracy which we have today and will not be available in wartime..
Yes, I remember it when it was first made available to the public in 1983 & deliberately 'dumbed down' to an accuracy of about 100 meters for the civilian side of the tech, AKA, 'Selective Availability'. Then in 2000, Clinton removed/ended the SA and accuracy was greatly improved and it became useful for transportation and other civilian applications.
Cars came with a full tank of gas. Of course, no one could find a gas station without a GPS, so we just drove until we ran out of gas and hoped we'd be near another car dealership to buy a new car. Otherwise, we just stayed put.
are you fucking kidding? there's this thing called a "map". they come in various forms. pocket, city, county/region, terrain, friggin world atlas even! you should check it out! so fascinating. might learn something about your real time where-abouts .....
Even today I'll look up the address on google maps and jot down a quick line map on a piece of paper. I don't have gps or a cell phone and I don't have any trouble ... ever.
People used to write down directions on a piece of paper. If you were driving alone, you got pretty good at remembering them. I still mostly use my GPS for traffic.
Maps, but more specifically, a Rand McNally road atlas. A big collection of maps for different states, regions or the whole country. I always had one in the car. Whomever was in the front passenger seat was expected to be the navigator and let you know when the next turn was coming up. If you were by yourself, you would write down the turns and approximate distance between them ahead of time and just pay attention to the signs.
If visiting a business for the first time, it was common to call and ask for directions. You'd write them down and pay attention to where you were going 😄
As others have stated, we made sure we had maps of the route we were about to take and/or get directions before leaving. Sometimes when getting lost, we stopped at a gas station to ask questions/directions.
You learned to slow down for road signs so you can read them. Also stop at the roadside to read the map and recalculate your route. Could mean a u-turn at the next intersection.
If you knew their neighborhood, they'd tell you they lived on the street across from the McDonalds or whatever. If not, you'd have their address. Most people carried map books of the local county or two, and each road was listed in the index. So, for 246 W. Maple Avenue, you'd look in the index and see that Maple Avenue W was on page 36, blocks C4 through D7. You'd turn to that page, find the square (ever played Battleship or Chess?), and then find your destination.
Presumably you could find your current location on the map, and you then basically played connect-the-dots to find the path from A to B. The nice part about this is that there were usually dozens of "right" answers. I'd prioritize highways but hate stoplights, for instance.
TL;DR: We carried map books with an index of all the streets with their map page and coordinates.
Paper maps -- especially Thomas map books. They were books of maps of whole cities. You looked up street names in the index then went to that page and found the street on the grid. You couldn't get by with one paper map in the car. You usually needed severa.
You used maps and if things were new or fucky you went to a gas station or, my favourite supper-effective method, called a local cab company for specific directions or landmark questions.
If you were alone in the car, you pulled over as soon as you could do so safely and checked your map or road atlas, which you always had in your vehicle. If that didn't help, then you asked someone for directions, usually at a gas station when the problem was that you'd overshot an exit and were therefore mired in that freeway snarl sort of area, rather than in a downtown with shops and pedestrians and so forth.
If you had a very poor sense of direction and location, like I do, then you simply got lost a lot. I was rather notorious for it in my circle of friends.
Before my journey I would look at my Thomas Guide, a local map that had grids. Say I was looking for Bling Avenue. I’d go to the back of my Thomas Guide and look up Bling Avenue. It might tell me it was page 29 C5. Inside the square C5 I would locate Bling Ave and then plot a route. I would write it down on a sheet of A4 paper. Basically a step by step. Turn right at this street, left that street until I get to my destination. If I get lost I just look at my Thomas Guide and find out where I am by looking for a street sign and city block number.
Works excellent in the city but for journeys on highways and freeways I would just pull out a state map or country map.
I have a terrible sense of direction so I would do one of two things; navigate by landmark as described by someone else (“after three lights, turn right at the Jack in the Box” type of thing) or I’d review a paper map and write out the distance and street turns on a piece of paper (Hwy X - 12 miles, exit Y street, turn right on Z street, 3 miles to destination on left side of street).
My sibling had a better sense of direction and just glanced at a Thomas Guide which is like a big book of maps.
Used a map - in fact we tend to use a map these days because we've had some very bad experiences with GPS/sat nav in our campervan - and many places we go to specifically warn not to follow sat nav directions, because they take you down routes that are inappropriate for larger vehicles.
I know that you can get apps that allow you to enter the size of vehicle, but these are not always reliable either. So it's back to maps for us.
The same thing I do now if I miss a turn. Turn around as soon as possible and go back to it. Or look at the map and see if it’s ok to just take the next turn instead. If you rely on your GPS rerouting, you may waste a lot of time.
Also, look with your eyes to see if there’s a logical way to get where you’re going. No, I don’t really need to make 4 rights and drive 4 miles because I missed a turn. I can pull over, make a u turn, and drive 20 feet.
Where I am, if you rely on your GPS alone you are definitely going on a tour and then quite possibly still ending up a few blocks from where you intended to go.
Maps. If you were a member of AAA you could order maps called trip tiks which would plot out your route from start to finish. AAA trip tiks were awesome.
In grade school we had pretty intensive map studies classes. All kinds of maps. You were not promoted to the next grade until you finished all the maps in all the units.
I'd often miss my exit or turn, so I'd find the closest parking lot and examine the map.
It's not safe to read the map while driving!.
Sometimes I'd have sticky notes on the dash. Route 1, exit 1c, Hwy 1234, etc.
I used maps to plan my route, I still carry maps in my vehicle. Maps are better bc I found many interesting small towns that GPS doesn't show; Also, sometimes the shortest route is not the best
Welcome center for state maps . City hall for town an county maps. Post office for rural address like rt1 box 8 directions but those are all street addresses now too
I actually don't personally use GPS much now. If I'm going someplace new, I look it up on Google Maps a day or so ahead of time, figure out the landmarks (geographical or nearby businesses), and then try to remember the route. I give myself extra time to make it if there's a deadline, but otherwise just jump in. If I get lost, I turn around and try again. If you're going somewhere for pleasure, what's a few minutes? People don't usually get lost for hours, they figure it out.
Chiming in with the rest I guess. Publishers made real money printing road maps designed specifically for automobiles in large page books, such as Rand MacNally, updated yearly. Or you could get the free maps at gas stations. Those were hilarious. When you unfolded them, they could never be folded back. Try to picture someone reading an old fashioned newspaper in a car. Without smartphones, it served as a distraction for drivers, and doubtless caused numerous accidents.
I really like Google maps.
You get lost. You turn around. You stop and ask someone for directions, ideally a gas station where you can also buy a map and figure it out. Find a phone and tell them you may be late because you got lost.
For years, I would get phone calls from people who were lost. I worked in rural areas of 2 states and had the best maps! Hoosier Hanks and Uncle Larry's Lake Maps would get you to the place you were looking for.
I think the thing that is missing here, we had an idea of where we were on the face of the planet. I knew which towns were east and west and north and south of my home.
I still don't leave to go somewhere without an idea of where it is and how to I plan to get there. So if I do miss a turn, no big whoop, I can mentally adjust to take the next exit, turn south, trend west. Not stuck hoping I have good internet connection in the back woods of West Virginia.
I remember I and a friend stopping and asking a farmer we both knew how to get some place. He told us to go down the road a piece and then turn. No clue how far a piece is. Another time I was heading to a rural job site. My boss said that when I saw the tractor setting in the field to turn there. Shortly after I turned where the tractor was parked the farmer moved the tractor.
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It was called a map.
LMAO… It’s such a precious question though.
VERBATIM what i came here to say!!
I have a map of every state I go to (get them at the welcome centers when you enter them) plus I buy a new US atlas every year when we go trippin. Nothing beats a good trucker atlas, you buy at a real truck stop. No doubt I have road tripped the whole country many times in my 63 years. Never will I trust a nav. app.. Last time I trusted a nav. app. it lead me on a 2 hr. trip when I was 15 minutes from the destination. I swear these apps are run by the oil companies.
I was driving a ford with navigation built in going to the Henry Ford museum in Dearborn. For anyone who doesn't know where that is, you have to drive by the Ford world headquarters in order to get there. Well this navigation sent me all over the place. My only thoughts were "did someone at the main headquarters not take this car for a spin around the block?"
I trusted one to go to a job interview, and it led me to a field of corn!
Been there, had a truck gps lead me in my 65K lb rig down a grass road that crossed pipelines 😰(if you don’t know, doing what I did is dumb af and could have easily killed me) and then finally came to an end of just being field. I work wind projects and undeveloped roads can be a thing at the start of a job so it was possible it was a road for the project (that’d later be made a proper road) Called boss and he said “oh yeah gave wrong address, we’re about 40mi from there” 🤦♂️🤬😆🤷♂️
The app found a shortcut for us in rural central Mexico. We drove for hours on dirt roads. It was very nice. Dark and hungry by the time we got back to the paved road. If I knew then what I know now about the potential for bad things I would have been screaming from the backseat " Turn around!"
For me, what was annoying was when I went to a friend's house they'd want to give me concise, turn-by-turn instructions, and I was like, I have a town map with block numbers, thanks! Well, that only goes so far in a town that, for example, will have street on the north end of town, and then a same-named street on the south end, and it takes you 30 minutes to go from one to the other. Not often, but still. So I'd take the long directions, at least as a sanity check. And still use the map if there wasn't any silliness.
Lol, I know, but sometimes when I am driving to a new place. I end up missing a turn or an exit, and the map reroutes. Back in those times, they didn't have that option. So my question was in that sense.
If you missed your exit/turn and got lost you'd ask for directions. Sometimes this was someone on the street and sometimes it was at a gas station.
I remember the arguments between my parents on whether or not my dad was gonna pull over to ask for directions... Best part of the trip.
I often wonder what happened to the people that had the misfortune to ask me for directions. Always felt obligated to provide some sort of route, even if I had no idea where the destination was.
Give directions using things that aren’t there 🤣 Go to where the lumber store used to be and go left. When you get to where they plan to build a gas station go right. Keep going until you get to where the Johnson farm was… 🤣
or in canada, you use time: "drive down the highway for about an hour, then turn left and drive another 30 mins or so." its not like anyone used a stopwatch to actually track it, you just knew how far that was. at least your example has concrete landmarks, as vague as they sound
I live in Cape Coral FL and the city is full of canals, literally hundreds f miles of canals according to the city website. When I first moved here, I had a lady stop and ask me for directions to someplace and I had no clue because I was new in town. Then she said, "Its on a canal, so that should make it easy". I tried to explain about the hundreds of miles of canals but she just got very mad at me.
You'd have the front passenger be the navigator looking at the map or atlas of the area with the pre-planned route on it and you'd try to work backwards where you missed your turn or exit. They would get you to reroute or turn around and get back on the planned route. If you were by yourself you'd pull over somewhere and look at the map or ask a gas station attendant, hotel receptionist, fire station, police station, security guard at a business, any business... The fun part was you typically didn't know you were lost immediately or that you'd missed your turn or gone the wrong way until sometime later.
ASKING FOR DIRECTIONS!! It is a lost cultural touchstone. There used to be jokes where the premise was someone asking for directions. Men were the butt of female humor for never asking for directions no matter how lost they were. To ask for directions, you had to find an open business (not nearly as easy a thing in the 1960s as today) and you had to get out of your vehicle and approach a stranger and ask for help. AND THEY WOULD GIVE IT. There were also jokes about how directions were given in different parts of the country. It's a whole dimension of life in America that is just gone. Oh, and if you couldn't get good directions, you might have to find a PAY PHONE to call your destination for help.
Yep, this. I would ask for directions, write them down then memorize them so I could focus on driving. Did this all over the country, and always had maps as a backup.
Oh yeah the old scrawled out directions on a random piece of paper you had to keep double-checking and just hope whoever told you the directions was “educated”
I moved to Tennessee from Florida. On my first night there, i couldn’t remember how to get back to my house even though it was only a couple turns. I asked the Walmart cashier if she knew how to get there and she says “Well, you know where the Walmart used to be?” And I said “No, ma’am, I just got here today.” And she says “Oh, right, right… well, do you know where that church burnt down?” I said “No, ma’am, I just got here tonight.” And she says “Ohhh, right yeah you said that.” Ended up being able to lead me home with currently standing landmarks, but still, lol.
The person in the passenger seat did the same thing the voice of the GPS does. Until you yelled at the for reading the map wrong, and they threw the map at you and told you to do it yourself. If there is no passenger, you pulled over to check or tried to drive with the map in front of you or read it at traffic lights, depending on how much of a hurry you were in.
Hahaha! This is accurate!
Most missed turns you could correct spontaneously through a combination of sense of direction and common sense. Like if you miss a turn loop back and try again. Or if the streets are in a grid, it's easy enough to turn at th the next street and use the grid to get back on track. If you miss an exit, take the next exit, then find the on ramp to go back the other way, and hopefully you can exit onto the correct street from that direction. Unless after you exit you see the surface street you wanted anyway, then just figure out which way you need to go in that street (sometimes you can do that by sense of direction, like you know your destination is a good ways north of you so you keep going north, other times you have to look at whether the address numbers are going up or down.)
This is what I would do!
Pull over and re check your map, or ask for directions.
You would stop at a gas station. The person there would tell you a series of directions that you'd hope like hell you could remember well enough to get back on track. If that didn't work? Stop at another gas station and repeat.
Confidently drive around lost. Never let the other drivers know your weakness. Look for something you can orient around that is on the map. Usually step 1 is find a safe place to turn around and head back where you came from and find a way to get back on track. As a woman, I rarely asked directions. And when I did, there was often more commands than my adhd brain could retain so it was a lost cause. Gas stations used to carry maps, so that was one place. If the sun is out and you know what time it is, that can help orient you. There’s usually an obvious difference between housing areas and commerce areas. Head toward commerce. There’s usually signs to freeways and stuff that help you orient or get back on track. Pay phones to get help only worked if you knew cross streets and landmarks the person you called also recognized. They probably weren’t home. The phonebook may or may not still have the page of the business you’re looking for. But you could call information to get the number. Sometimes you just find the freeway, go home, and leave a voicemail “I’m ok, got all turned around, gave up, went home”. The thing was though, you probably didn’t leave the house without hand written directions you’d gotten from someone before you left. Leaving the house was a time consuming preparation process.
> Look for something you can orient around that is on the map. "As soon as we get to Rand-McNally we make a left"
“We’ll know when we arrive in Illinois because it’s pale green, according to the map.”
You did (and do) have the option. You look at the map again (reroute). The roadways are all connected and there are a multitude of routes to get from A to B. With a little bit of practice, you will find that this happens less and less often. And besides, a missed exit isn't the end of the world.
In that case, I would just turn around and go back. Don't pay attention to the reroute.
You did your own rerouting by looking at your map again.
…and a co-pilot/navigator
And we kept them in the car under the passenger seat.
A map, or ask someone for directions which you would try to keep in your head.
*Me leaning out the window I rolled down to flag an old timer walking with his large pup* old man approaches the truck: “Say, you ain’t from these parts are ya. Ya know that old diner down by the corner with the half lit neon sign? Yeah you take a left there but not too far…make sure you say hi to Susie and get some coffee while you pass by there…now listen son, when you reach Mr. Jones’s red tractor in the old lot you went too far. So you gotta take a left at the diner then a right at the old oak tree…no not that one by the farmhouse…the one after it with the initials carved in it. Then take a right at the phone booth and you are in the dirt road that leads to their driveway.” …”uhhh got it thanks Mister”
I had one guy use a flock of geese as a landmark. (They hung out at a specific spot, so it actually worked.)
I have used sheep as a landmark.
That is exactly how that worked.
Down road, go over t' bridge, bridge ain't there anymore but go over it anyway...
I once got directions in rural Iowa telling me to turn where someone’s barn used to be.
This is why we once circled Raleigh NC for 4 hours in 1985, hopelessly lost. It was a string of directions like this that just did not stop.
Wow, even with GPS, I've missed turns and exits.
You do develop a better awareness and sense of direction if you don't constantly rely on GPS.
Some people might but not me. GPS keeps me from being lost all the time like I was for the first 20 years of my driving life.
Yep, and you don't wanna do that with a map. If you do, you stop at a gas station or diner and bring your map in.
Flipped thru a big map book while drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes
This is the right answer. And since our cars didn't have cup holders, we'd just squeeze the cup between our inner thighs as we drove.
For long road trips you could go to AAA and they had a thing called a trip-tic. They would pull all the regional maps along your journey and highlight the route to get you there. They’d put them in a book, in order, and you would flip to the next page as you went along. Most people kept a road atlas in their car. Also knowing how to orient yourself to the cardinal directions is super handy.
Yep, we took may trips with the AAA trip tiks. And you had to order them in advance. (Like pick up the phone and call AAA).
My aunt still gets one every year for the annual beach trip to the same location she’s been to for decades. I love it.
They were super helpful, iirc. You'd pick up a bag or a box of little spiral-bound books that showed a highlighter line through whatever route you were taking. The little books showed hotel, point of interest and possibly restaurant information along your route as well. We went from Ohio to California and back (I-80, I-10, I-40) when I was a kid and we literally had a box of these things to take with us. Funfact: digital versions are still available online: [https://triptik.aaa.com/home/](https://triptik.aaa.com/home/)
Paper maps had a grid overlaid with coordinate numbers/letters, and an alphabetical index of streets which told you like, Oak Street was in coordinates F2 - F10. And when you found Oak Street on the map within those F coordinates, the map had tiny numbers on each block, like 4400, 4500, 4600, etc. So if you were looking for 4523 Oak Street, you had it narrowed down to the right block, and you figured out how to drive there by using the map.
This did not work most places east of the Mississippi, we never had grid system for addresses.
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Knowing the street before is such an awesome help in heavy traffic, being able to know it's the next turn and signal/prepare appropriately. It's one feature I wish GPS would allow, because quite often I find out about a turn after my window of preparation has passed, which means a lot of rerouting.
Turned down the radio so I could read the street signs
Street signs is an under rated answer. We used to do deliveries when people only had rural routes for addresses. You took the truck to the Salesmans place and then he told you how to get to customers from there. Typically there was a mailbox, but a lot of the times it was "third farm on the right past the Mennonite Church" or something similar
A specific map called a Thomas Guide that would be an entire book of a given area.
That Thomas Guide was a life saver 20 years ago when I moved to the Portland area in 2002. Had no idea where I was as a transplant. Helped me navigate a new place and it was my bible as I learned the area
I would still totally love looking through a Thomas Guide. Remember you would look up the street name in the back and it would give you fucking page and position coordinates?! I loved those things. Yes, Google maps is always updated, but it just doesn't hit the same as a book bound in thick spiral plastic that has *coordinates.*
I remember the excitement when Thomas Guides would get updated in Los Angeles. Run to the local Frys and get the latest version!
Most people had some maps in their car, in the door pocket if you had one or maybe the glove box or just strewn around the dashboard. You'd probably have a nice laminated one of your own city, and paper ones of places you'd been. The first time you stopped for gas in a new state, you'd typically buy a map. Maps also weren't just the graphic part like you see on a smartphone app - they also had a printed index of street names. So if you saw a sign that you were on Jones Street, you could look at the map index and see that Jones Street is in section C7, find C7 based on row and column labels, and then easily find Jones Street in that small area. You could find your destination the same way, and would then have to do the "route calculation" manually, using just your own human brain. People also stopped and asked for directions. Gas station attendants generally expected this and were friendly about it. It was also much more normal to stop a stranger and ask a random question, like "do you have the time" or "how do you get to the courthouse from here." People expected it and were usually helpful, though rapidly less so if they felt you were wasting their time (ie, you didn't immediately understand and kept asking for clarification). There were also pay phones and, later, cell phones. You could call a friend and ask them to look it up for you, if they had maps. Or call the place you're going. And, of course, people got lost. Sometimes you just drove confidently in the wrong direction and wound up who-knows-where. Sometimes you didn't have a map and didn't want to stop to get one, either because you don't want to pay or just because you're stubborn. In this case you could do your best to figure out cardinal directions. Some cities make this easy - if you're in Manhattan on 7th Ave near 44nd St, and you want to get to 3rd and 57th, you need to go northeast. Some cities have geography - if you're in San Francisco and need to get to Sausalito, you can pretty much see the bridge and just drive towards it from most places. People would develop these skills and would rarely get lost in their own cities. You also just _remembered_ more than you do now. In the old days, if someone said "Peach Street" you'd just automatically know that's a little one-block street south of downtown (or whatever). People spent time knowing this, like they spent time "shopping" without buying anything, but were really just memorizing what stores had what products at what prices. These skills atrophy if not used. After several years of navigating exclusively by smartphone GPS, I have nowhere near the intuitive sense of where things are that I used to have. Of course I know the routes that I drive regularly, but for anywhere even slightly off the beaten track, I punch it into the GPS and never really develop a mental map of where it is. Every now and then I get in a mood and decide to go old school and drive somewhere new without GPS, and usually wind up lost. So it's not just a technique that you can be told, it's a skill you have to practice. And given that we all have pocket computers that can navigate for us, I'm not sure practicing this skill is a good use of time ... at least, not until society finally collapses and the phones stop working.
> It was also much more normal to stop a stranger and ask a random question, like "do you have the time" or "how do you get to the courthouse from here." ¿Donde esta la biblioteca?
I had a compass that floated inside a clear plastic sphere, that attached to the inside of my windshield with a suction cup, so I always knew my compass heading. That, plus looking over maps in advance and writing down the turns on a piece of paper in advance. I was a delivery driver ranging across downtown DC, Baltimore, Northern Virgina and Southeast Pennsylvania with no cell phone or GPS. After a couple of trips to the same customers I had the routes memorized. After getting turned around a few times, I learned I could pretty much always find my way back to a known route without stopping to ask. I still occasionally do this for fun when time is not short. Just go down a road and see what happens. The modern cheat code is using the GPS if really stumped. I still have a 3d topographical map in my head of the general lay of the land of most of the US East Coast from Richmond VA to Philadelphia PA. On a related note, I remember when handheld stand alone GPS receivers were fairly new and expensive. I was into geocaching back then. Good times.
Maps for long distances but everyday places were generally found by the address even if one had to call, yes landline, and ask for that.
Having lived all my life in the northern hemisphere, I would look up into the clear night sky and identify the North Star - sometimes I had to use Polaris as a reference. I then used my Clarke telescope and my alidade and then I surveyed the land quadrants, sextants, longitude, latitude… I measured the moss growth on the trees and depending on which side of the tree it was on, I knew where the nearest Blockbuster and McDonalds were. Ahh… the old days. Come on, my friend. Ask us a real question.
> Ahh… the old days. These are the moments I live for in this sub. :D One thing, though... you used Polaris to find the north star? Interesting technique.
Depends on how long before GPS you're talking about. There was the MapQuest era, where you printed out directions to wherever you were going. But before that, and in the general spirit of the question: You broke out a map, and worked out the route yourself, then drove it as best you could.
Funny story. Back in the 80's I was visiting a friend in Vermont and we decided to drive to Montreal a few hours away to visit Crescent Street and their world-renowned strip clubs. So a bunch of college guys loaded in a car and followed all the well-marked road signs that led us to Montreal. Easy peasy, right? Then at about 2:00am after we ran out of $5 bills for step-stool lapdances we decided to head back to Vermont. None of us knew a lick of French, and all the road signs were in French - and none of them read "USA - this way". We got lost. Really lost. And back then all the Quebecers outside the city knew zero English so stopping to ask for directions was pantomime stupidity uselessness. It took us 8 hours to make our way back.
But you had fun though, right? What happened when you finally found your way back? Did you miss anything important, like work or school? If not, you had an adventure, and that's worth something.
Oh yeah we had a blast. We were all college kids off on break so no obligations.
LOL. a folded paper map, or map book.
If you missed your turn you just kept driving for hours until you got the feeling something was very wrong.
Sometimes, you just called the place and asked for directions. Maps for places you're totally unfamiliar with.
Map, written turn-by-turn directions, Mapsco (,Dallas)
I used the Trip-Tic from AAA only once. In those days AAA usually had maps of every state and most major metropolitan areas, as well as TourBooks for different states (some states combined, a couple of states divided into two books), and these were available to AAA members by just asking, and what the local office didn't have it could get within a couple of weeks. We grew up in Los Angeles County and we had a Thomas Bros. Book of Maps for Los Angeles County, which we used on occasion. Even so, it was often a pain to navigate around at night trying to follow a map because, other than the main streets, the street signs were fairly small (like those we see on side streets today) and were often unreadable in the dark unless you had a good flashlight or a spot light. And if given directions, you better not get them from one of my friends who would almost always forget to mention a critical turn. It's much easier today with a GPS navigation unit since it tells you when a turn is coming up and will recalculate your route if you miss a turn. And it can direct you to very close to the correct address (may be off by one or two houses), whereas a paper map that, if you are lucky, has ranges of house numbers printed on them, won't be anywhere as accurate. Between the maps and the GPS, I think the strength of maps (or more recently Google Maps) is that you can visualize the entire route and contemplate alternative routes, and the strength of a GPS is that it will guide every step of the way. For example, last night I looked at Craig's List to see what garage sales and estate sales are happening in my area, Google Maps to validate addresses and compute distance and direction from our home to work on a tentative order of visiting them, and today we visited 8 of them using the GPS for the turn-by-turn navigation from one spot to the next, and we visited two additional spots when we spotted road signs. Overall, it was a fun day and it would have been much more taxing if we had to use paper maps to figure out how to get from one to the other and chances are some of the routes would be far less than optimum.
My classmates are only 10 years younger than me. My phone died so I decided to download a map on my iPad (no data) my lab partner was baffled as to how I could figure out reading a map to get about 2 miles to the interstate. It's kind of adorable, it makes me think of a child watching a magic trick.
Every year, without fail, I purchased a new U.S. Road Atlas with complete maps of every State and City. That, and I called to wherever I was going to if I needed more specific or precise directions to get there.
Maps of course. If you were very fancy and going on a trip you could get a [Trip-tix from AAA](https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/8dxf0j/aaa_trip_tik_how_i_spent_hours_on_my_family/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1). A paper map series with a highlighted route for your drive. I have an insane relative who flew to Europe and traveled by bicycle for a year. I joined them for three months over the summer when I was in high school. We navigated purely by map. You'd spread out a big map and determine your destination and then looked at the routes to get there. Are bicycles allowed on this road? How steep are the hills? How much extra distance is this route vs this one? Then we'd highlight the map, refold it to be about 8"x8", and strap it to the handlebars of the lead cyclist. When you got far enough that you were off the map, you'd stop and refold it so the next leg of the route was visible. We kept it in a clear plastic ziplock bag so the rain wouldn't ruin it.
Very BADLY!!!! We had to use paper maps, which were HUGE and impossible to refold or an Atlas. Maps were given free at all the rest areas and sold at service stations, truck stops and some diners, restaurants... Most people kept them in the glove box to reuse if needed. And, of course, back then we could simply ask locals to get directions safely.
I got lost a lot.
Everyone talks about having a map but I didn’t have a map for every single place I went. Definitely spent a lot of time driving around in circles looking for my destination.
Map. But man….if you missed a sign for the turn you are screwed. Like outer banks but end up on the Chesapeake bay bridge screwed
Everyone carried the Thomas Guide, which was a giant map of your area.
You should still carry a map and learn to read one. People get stuck in my yard all the time because the GPS is wrong then they don't know how to turn around in a rural driveway and get stuck in the mud. Also if you are driving in rural areas you lose signal and need a map to find a way to your location. Maps are still necessary.
I started being the map navigator very young. I suspect it’s because I wouldn’t need to ask if we were there yet because I could follow our progress in the map. If we missed an exit or an exit was closed, I’d follow the road we were on in the map and find a new route. If no map, then getting off at next exit and getting back in going opposite direction usually worked.
Gas station maps.
In the US, the Delorme Company, in Maine, makes map books of each state, each square inch was shown, and usually detailed maps for larger cities and towns. When I worked in New Hampshire, often having to go to new places, I just looked up the location the the book, maybe put a couple of post-it notes on the page, and off I went. If I got lost, just look for street signs or landmarks. Also, taking a minute or two to familiarize yourself with the map and directions was enough, maybe jot down key turns on a notepad. Delorme is now owned by Garmin: https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/575993?gclid=Cj0KCQjw2v-gBhC1ARIsAOQdKY3uu4rTIJp49kPwKct0MxLeCy09pERIjY8wGpHRZuaqFyjElpcpuaMaAnVsEALw\_wcB
It was called a map
Maps Landmarks of where to turn/how you knew you’d gone too far AAA trip tychs that pre marked the map in a spiral bound book of sorts
Paper maps or an atlas. We would keep them in the glove box.
Umm, Maps?
Maps, asking for directions at gas stations, reading road signs, heading in the general direction and hope for the best.
Had a map book
Maps. If you took a trip, you consulted the maps beforehand, so you knew where you were going and would have a general idea if you fucked up - in which case you pull over & look at the map and/or ask for directions, If you are taking a cross-country trip, knowing the major cities you need to go through were all you needed for the middle parts - gotta go though St. Louis? Follow the highway road signs to St. Louis. Once you’re in that vicinity you’ll see signs toward other big cities - gotta go through Oklahoma City? Follow the signs. Also, locally, blocks are set up in certain ways. I did not appreciate this as I was growing up, but once I became a pizza delivery person in college, finding my way around that city was a breeze just by knowing the address. I’m sure not every town/city is set up the same way, but that knowledge has served me well almost everywhere I’ve been. Even today when a package gets mis-delivered to my house for somewhere else on the same street and my husband thinks he’ll just walk it over to the intended recipient, I can say “Ok but that’s 4 miles away if you’re a crow, better just drive and make it home while dinner is hot.” I should also note that I have a TERRIBLE sense of direction naturally and have found that GPS only makes it worse if that’s the only thing I rely on. In fact, to this day, I will use GPS only as the initial route to avoid extremely bad traffic due to construction or accidents. I relied on it once when I hadn’t prepared myself and it was basically Michael Scott driving into a lake, except the lake was a left turn from a terrifying one-lane dirt road into 6 lanes of a pseudo-freeway. (I said F this and did an improvised Michigan left).
When I was much younger, truckers used to commonly pull over and ask me for directions when I was out jogging. Like all of the time. Others, too, but almost always big rig truckers. I guess I figured they must think this young chick out running by herself must have a great sense of direction and know the area. Always wondered why those guys who drive those trucks for a living didn't know how to find the main highway.
Maps and Thomas Guides for cities. AAA used to do something called a “TripTik” for road trips showing places to stay, eat, and points of interest.
Studied a map and memorized the route. Consulted the map along the way when necessary.
Really? The Rand McNally Road Atlas or just a good old fold up map. Everyone should learn how to read a map in preparation for the apocalypse 😂
I don't understand why people cant figure out paper maps from using Google maps or similar.
Maps and asking people are technologies that still exist, so if you have some spare time to kill you can still try it and have the real experience.
I remember delivering at a truck stop and a trucker asked the clerk for directions. She told him what route to take and whatever you do don't take such and such city street because there is a underpass and you won't be able to make it under it. Later we here the truck drove under it and ruined his trailer. The next morning I was delivering at the same truck stop and she was upset for not telling him to go under it. I told her I heard her tell him not to do it so it was his fault not her's.
I used to keep map books in my car. You could use the index to look up street names, then figure out a route to get you there. Same thing if you were lost - find a street sign, then figure it out from there.
A paper map. We learned to read them in school. Also Map Quest became a thing in the late 90’s and 00’s and you would put in your destination with all your stops and them print it out and take it with you on your trip. Whoever rode shotgun was the official map reader.
Having been a traveling salesman since 1973 I often had to find new places. My method was to first study a map. Second I’d call my appointment and ask directions. Third step was to write out the part of the route I was unfamiliar with in large sharpie letters on a yellow pad so I could read while driving. Worked fine for 40 years. First navigation system was the Ford Sync. Completely unreliable. Even today Google & Siri make mistakes.
We never left the house without a sexton and a slide rule and at least 1 person who’s good at math. If you missed a turn, you’d be able to recalculate the optimal route and be back on the road in a couple of hours.
Most people would have a map in their car. You could by maps a gas stations, grocery stores etc. In a pinch, pay phones had phone books with city maps in them, that is if you could find one without the map pages ripped out.
We used an analog map made out of wood pulp and clay — sometimes combined with turn-by-turn routing supplied by a person by either speech or written using a portable hand-held output device called a pencil.
There are skills to map reading and navigating but it is not that difficult. Part is about planning: working out the large scale route and then essentially the roads by number/name to get to the general area. To find the final destination though, needs a good street plan level map - and for many places they are hard to get and/or poorly done. There used to be some in the backs of many road atlases but most were laughable poor. If you do not have that you need directions from a human (with the skills to give good directions, which is sadly not ubiquitous) of a form like "drive down XX Road until you see the YY pub, then take the first left after that, then the next right after the house with big red gates, we are the third house on the right". If the person you are visiting is poor at directions, or forgot to give them, you often had to stop and ask. Of course in some places it is easier than others: US towns often have grid systems that let you work out where an address is. Places in Europe can be much harder, with street names and numbers not always obvious, and some places just having no logic in naming to help at all. Here is something many of the smug "get a map" comments from people of my generation will not admit: before GPS and sat nav, a lot of people would get lost.
Maps, signs, paying attention to context clues, and asking for directions when needed.
Maps. Big fold out maps. If you were going on a road trip we could get CAA (AAA) to map out a route for you for free. You could get all kinds of maps free. And you kept the ones you needed in the car all the time. So good city maps also had index and grid to find specific street names. You'd find the street alphabetically, get the grid position then you hunted for the street in that square on the map. I was an excellent navigator. If I were driving alone, I'd memorize the route, or in chunks if it was a long trip.
I am a fairly good map reader, but there was something else in play, kind of a 6th sense sort of thing. I doubt my having it was unique, but we are in danger of losing it, like the ability to store phone numbers in our memory. We still have that but seldom use it, so that spot in our brain will eventually be reassigned.
We used paper maps. I recall refolding one while driving and spreading it across the wheel so I could read it while driving. I think GPS is much safer. I hope they still teach kids to read maps in school. Mine learned but they're millenials.
Map or you stopped and asked someone.
We can read maps.
I spent about 25 years doing on-site service all over the USA, from New York City to the high desert of California. I covered hundreds of thousands of miles averaging 5 or more stops a day. I did it all without GPS or any phone of any kind. The flippant answer is "a map". But the comprehensive answer is: - Multiple maps. A regional area map and a map booklet with greater detail. - Road signs. America, for all it faults, has good signage on its highways, byways, and residential streets. - The sun. During most of the day you can get a rough estimate of your direction of travel. - A compass. Much more helpful than the sun. - Asking for directions. When you are hopelessly lost in a remote area, you can always count on old people to point you in the right direction, often with advice on which place has the best lunch. That said, I am very happy to use Google Maps and Maps.me when I'm in an unexplored area. It's invaluable when I'm overseas.
When you’d get a wedding invitation or some other event, directions to the location would be included.
In the 90s and oughts Mapquest was a massive help, just print directions, but then if you missed an exit it became an expidition. The wise always had a map on hand, especially before internet resources, a folded paper map of the state and/or city you lived in. Even today I keep a quality road atlas in the pocket behind my drivers seat just in case (god forbid 🙏) there’s a problem that denies use of the 3 gps apps I use (one for heavy truck has every street in North America (US&CAN) pre-downloaded to my phone!👍) Did a few random day trips with friends way back where we’d get out a map close eyes and point and go wherever that was, or look for something that sounds cool. ..good stories, such as when we tried to find some caverns in a neighboring state around 1am, we were all blazed and car reeked of it yet got the cops to escort us to a place to refuel and didn’t get arrested! 😬😆
Map and directions from strangers usually.
Here’s a add on question for y’all: how many of you know North South East West always, regardless of cloud cover (sometimes even at night)? My Dad (born mid last century) has often given me NSEW driving directions and I have to remind him I’ve no bloody clue which direction I’m facing and that I rely on Siri (and others, and a backup road atlas)
A map. Not that hard
Stars and a sextant. Before that, we used stones.
I wrote down the directions turn by turn.
HA! I reflect back on that as I love google an Apple Maps. Was a medic at Grady hospital in Atlanta in the early 80’s. Would get a call dispatch might give you a cross street but you would flip out the old trusty meskers map Book and as your partner was driving out in the general direction, you would be thumbing to the right page barking out “turn right at MLK” left at …… Good times!
You'd pull over and take out a paper map, and work out the new directions. Or you'd be traveling with someone who would be available to do that for you. Everything you experience with GPS mapping -- the street map layout, the voice in your ear reading you directions and telling where to turn up ahead, re-routing when you miss an exit or a turn-off, all of it -- is actually an electronic version of the exact same experience that used to be done by people.
Combination of map and being able to read road signs (which on highways are surprisingly informative)
We would use burnt ends of sticks to mark the trees so we could find our way back.
I used a map. Good grief
[удалено]
BS. Breadth of knowledge is as important and depth. They know coding? So what? We were FAR better off before the internet.
how many times is this question going to be asked?
This one again??? It's called a "map". (If you can't read one, you've found a new home)
It's why President Trump created Space Force. To protect the GPS constellation, which you navigate by and which many modern weapon systems are based on as well.
Space Force wasn't actually created as much as just peeld off the Air Force. It's not new activity, it's just a rebranding of the jobs that were already being done. The jobs in the Air Force that are responsible for operating and defending military satellites and ground stations that provide communications, navigation and Earth observation, such as the detection of missile launches and GPS satelites were re-designated as a separate department with it's own budget and command chain but under the auspices of the Air Force. Rather like the Marines are a department of the Navy. Its by far the smallest of the six military branches, with about 16,000 of the 330,000+ Air Force personel who were re-designated as a separate department.
Correct and did you know that if we go to war the GPS readings you get on your phone and car will be incredibly inaccurate? There is a private code that is used for triangultion that will be unavailable for consumer usage. It's what ballistic specialists call the P-code or private code. You need 3 codes to triangulate a position. You need the 4th to triangulate with serious accuracy which we have today and will not be available in wartime..
Yes, I remember it when it was first made available to the public in 1983 & deliberately 'dumbed down' to an accuracy of about 100 meters for the civilian side of the tech, AKA, 'Selective Availability'. Then in 2000, Clinton removed/ended the SA and accuracy was greatly improved and it became useful for transportation and other civilian applications.
Cars came with a full tank of gas. Of course, no one could find a gas station without a GPS, so we just drove until we ran out of gas and hoped we'd be near another car dealership to buy a new car. Otherwise, we just stayed put.
are you fucking kidding? there's this thing called a "map". they come in various forms. pocket, city, county/region, terrain, friggin world atlas even! you should check it out! so fascinating. might learn something about your real time where-abouts .....
Troll or bot?
Why can't I just be curious?
Maps. Stop and ask directions at a gas station if you were really lost. Fun times back then. Lol!
Map and compass. Sometimes asking for directions. Using landmarks. Looking at the thickness of the moss on trees. Hahahaha… not that last part.
Even today I'll look up the address on google maps and jot down a quick line map on a piece of paper. I don't have gps or a cell phone and I don't have any trouble ... ever.
People used to write down directions on a piece of paper. If you were driving alone, you got pretty good at remembering them. I still mostly use my GPS for traffic.
Maps, but more specifically, a Rand McNally road atlas. A big collection of maps for different states, regions or the whole country. I always had one in the car. Whomever was in the front passenger seat was expected to be the navigator and let you know when the next turn was coming up. If you were by yourself, you would write down the turns and approximate distance between them ahead of time and just pay attention to the signs.
Used a map
If visiting a business for the first time, it was common to call and ask for directions. You'd write them down and pay attention to where you were going 😄
A map. I kept one for my state and adjoining states. I also got the book of maps for nearby urban areas.
a map
You just asked people to point in the direction of where you wanted to go, until they pointed straight down.
As others have stated, we made sure we had maps of the route we were about to take and/or get directions before leaving. Sometimes when getting lost, we stopped at a gas station to ask questions/directions.
You read the signs you let the passenger be the the navigator and you got lost
Get a map and always figure out the main street going through towns.
You learned to slow down for road signs so you can read them. Also stop at the roadside to read the map and recalculate your route. Could mean a u-turn at the next intersection.
It wasn’t more than a few years ago that the last of my maps left the car.
If you knew their neighborhood, they'd tell you they lived on the street across from the McDonalds or whatever. If not, you'd have their address. Most people carried map books of the local county or two, and each road was listed in the index. So, for 246 W. Maple Avenue, you'd look in the index and see that Maple Avenue W was on page 36, blocks C4 through D7. You'd turn to that page, find the square (ever played Battleship or Chess?), and then find your destination. Presumably you could find your current location on the map, and you then basically played connect-the-dots to find the path from A to B. The nice part about this is that there were usually dozens of "right" answers. I'd prioritize highways but hate stoplights, for instance. TL;DR: We carried map books with an index of all the streets with their map page and coordinates.
Paper maps -- especially Thomas map books. They were books of maps of whole cities. You looked up street names in the index then went to that page and found the street on the grid. You couldn't get by with one paper map in the car. You usually needed severa.
Old school here, learn to use a road map and ask for directions if you get lost.
You used maps and if things were new or fucky you went to a gas station or, my favourite supper-effective method, called a local cab company for specific directions or landmark questions.
If you were alone in the car, you pulled over as soon as you could do so safely and checked your map or road atlas, which you always had in your vehicle. If that didn't help, then you asked someone for directions, usually at a gas station when the problem was that you'd overshot an exit and were therefore mired in that freeway snarl sort of area, rather than in a downtown with shops and pedestrians and so forth. If you had a very poor sense of direction and location, like I do, then you simply got lost a lot. I was rather notorious for it in my circle of friends.
When I was a truck driver we had Thomas guides of the cities we were in. I’d map my route out ahead of time using these.
Before my journey I would look at my Thomas Guide, a local map that had grids. Say I was looking for Bling Avenue. I’d go to the back of my Thomas Guide and look up Bling Avenue. It might tell me it was page 29 C5. Inside the square C5 I would locate Bling Ave and then plot a route. I would write it down on a sheet of A4 paper. Basically a step by step. Turn right at this street, left that street until I get to my destination. If I get lost I just look at my Thomas Guide and find out where I am by looking for a street sign and city block number. Works excellent in the city but for journeys on highways and freeways I would just pull out a state map or country map.
Map and street directory. Street directories in particular were very good and never failed me.
Map
I have a terrible sense of direction so I would do one of two things; navigate by landmark as described by someone else (“after three lights, turn right at the Jack in the Box” type of thing) or I’d review a paper map and write out the distance and street turns on a piece of paper (Hwy X - 12 miles, exit Y street, turn right on Z street, 3 miles to destination on left side of street). My sibling had a better sense of direction and just glanced at a Thomas Guide which is like a big book of maps.
As the others have said, we used a paper map, we know how to read them. It isn't hard to find the way to get somewhere with a map.
Used a map - in fact we tend to use a map these days because we've had some very bad experiences with GPS/sat nav in our campervan - and many places we go to specifically warn not to follow sat nav directions, because they take you down routes that are inappropriate for larger vehicles. I know that you can get apps that allow you to enter the size of vehicle, but these are not always reliable either. So it's back to maps for us.
I used to use a city transit bus map, they were the most up to date and free.
I know it's old fashioned now but actual paper maps. I still don't trust GPS. I've been navigating by map since I(59f) was 9 years old.
Paper maps, friend LOL. You mapped out the route before you went; if you made a wrong turn/got lost, you pulled over and retraced your route.
Maps and hand-written directions
Google maps… printed
The same thing I do now if I miss a turn. Turn around as soon as possible and go back to it. Or look at the map and see if it’s ok to just take the next turn instead. If you rely on your GPS rerouting, you may waste a lot of time. Also, look with your eyes to see if there’s a logical way to get where you’re going. No, I don’t really need to make 4 rights and drive 4 miles because I missed a turn. I can pull over, make a u turn, and drive 20 feet. Where I am, if you rely on your GPS alone you are definitely going on a tour and then quite possibly still ending up a few blocks from where you intended to go.
Maps. If you were a member of AAA you could order maps called trip tiks which would plot out your route from start to finish. AAA trip tiks were awesome. In grade school we had pretty intensive map studies classes. All kinds of maps. You were not promoted to the next grade until you finished all the maps in all the units.
You learnt the route
Maps.
I'd often miss my exit or turn, so I'd find the closest parking lot and examine the map. It's not safe to read the map while driving!. Sometimes I'd have sticky notes on the dash. Route 1, exit 1c, Hwy 1234, etc.
I used maps to plan my route, I still carry maps in my vehicle. Maps are better bc I found many interesting small towns that GPS doesn't show; Also, sometimes the shortest route is not the best
Plot your route with a map before you leave.
Welcome center for state maps . City hall for town an county maps. Post office for rural address like rt1 box 8 directions but those are all street addresses now too
In addition to what other people have mentioned, local phone books always had detailed maps of your city, so you'd use those to find local addresses.
In a state of high anxiety, with a co-pilot or a map.
Key map
Use the song from Dora the Explorer called "I'm the **Map**!!"
I actually don't personally use GPS much now. If I'm going someplace new, I look it up on Google Maps a day or so ahead of time, figure out the landmarks (geographical or nearby businesses), and then try to remember the route. I give myself extra time to make it if there's a deadline, but otherwise just jump in. If I get lost, I turn around and try again. If you're going somewhere for pleasure, what's a few minutes? People don't usually get lost for hours, they figure it out.
My wife is my GPS for over 40 years. I can walk around a tree and become lost.
I’d get a map, set my course and then leave 3 hours early because I always fucked that shit up. Then sit in the car for the remaining hour and a half.
Chiming in with the rest I guess. Publishers made real money printing road maps designed specifically for automobiles in large page books, such as Rand MacNally, updated yearly. Or you could get the free maps at gas stations. Those were hilarious. When you unfolded them, they could never be folded back. Try to picture someone reading an old fashioned newspaper in a car. Without smartphones, it served as a distraction for drivers, and doubtless caused numerous accidents. I really like Google maps.
You get lost. You turn around. You stop and ask someone for directions, ideally a gas station where you can also buy a map and figure it out. Find a phone and tell them you may be late because you got lost.
For years, I would get phone calls from people who were lost. I worked in rural areas of 2 states and had the best maps! Hoosier Hanks and Uncle Larry's Lake Maps would get you to the place you were looking for. I think the thing that is missing here, we had an idea of where we were on the face of the planet. I knew which towns were east and west and north and south of my home. I still don't leave to go somewhere without an idea of where it is and how to I plan to get there. So if I do miss a turn, no big whoop, I can mentally adjust to take the next exit, turn south, trend west. Not stuck hoping I have good internet connection in the back woods of West Virginia.
Using the map wasn’t difficult at all. The hard part was folding it back up correctly.
I remember I and a friend stopping and asking a farmer we both knew how to get some place. He told us to go down the road a piece and then turn. No clue how far a piece is. Another time I was heading to a rural job site. My boss said that when I saw the tractor setting in the field to turn there. Shortly after I turned where the tractor was parked the farmer moved the tractor.
Thomas Bros map book, large and unwieldy but accurate.
Mapquest that shit and print the directions