Adventures in GPS Navigation

Robyn and I made a trip last weekend to visit baby William in Searcy, Arkansas. We thought it would be a perfect chance to try out Robyn's new GPS unit that Tim gave her for Christmas. I taught lessons Thursday afternoon and evening, and we left around 8 p.m., planning to drive to Nacogdoches to spend the night. The GPS worked beautifully and took us straight to our motel with no problems. Friday morning, we followed its directions and went north on US 59 toward Texarkana. As we approached Marshall, TX, the GPS told us to head east on I-20 toward Shreveport. Say what? According to the map we had in the car, there is no main highway connecting I-20 to I-30 from Shreveport, so I was not inclined to go that way. Robyn tried reprogramming it to compare routes, and it showed that going by way of Shreveport would actually save us about 30 minutes, so I figured we might as well try it. Somehow the thing got confused in all the reprogramming, and all it would tell us once we got on I-20 was, "take the next exit and make a U-turn." Okay, so much for that experiment. We took the U-turn and got back on US 59, which, by the way, is the route we've always taken.

We stopped for gas and switched drivers. When Robyn was pulling out of the station, I was leaving a phone message for Amy, and the GPS was telling Robyn to turn right, which would have headed us south, so I was madly trying to tell her to ignore the darn thing. Amy got an earful on her phone message! We finally got it straightened out.

We started getting hungry as we approached Prescott, AR, and the highway signs indicated that there was a Sonic at the next exit. Once we exited, the Sonic was nowhere to be seen. We spotted a sign that pointed us "thataway," so we drove toward the gleaming metropolis of downtown Prescott. Hmmm, still no Sonic in sight; might as well top off the tank again and ask for directions. While I was in the station asking the attendant, Robyn was using the GPS's food finding feature, which actually gave her a street address for the Sonic. At first we went the direction the attendant had pointed, but we found no Sonic. So we tried the GPS, which gave us turn-by-turn directions into a residential neighborhood and proclaimed, "your destination is on your right." Yeah, right, the Sonic is in that guy's back yard, maybe? We never did find the Sonic in Prescott, but we did somehow manage to find our way back to I-30, still hungry.

Eventually we made it to Searcy (the GPS calls it "SEEEERcy") and had a lovely time visiting with Amy & Neal and meeting young William. All of the pictures we took are on my Facebook page, but here are some samples:





We did lots of baby cuddling in the time we were there. Jack was with his mom for the weekend, so we were able to stay in his room (Robyn got to climb the ladder up to the top bunk, 'cause I was afraid I might stumble down it in the night during one of my bathroom visits). We played some rousing hands of spades, ate all of the chocolate that I had taken from our house to theirs, and went out to Chili's for dinner Saturday night. It was a wonderful visit, though a short one.

Sunday morning, Amy & Neal had to be at church by 7:30, so Robyn and I stayed home with William. Amy came home between services to get him, and we said our goodbyes and prepared for a long day's drive. You see, Robyn has a friend at school who had asked if she could pick him up in Waco for a ride back to Houston, so we went a bit out of our way (look at the map; you'll see what I mean) to get him. Robyn was all ready to trust the GPS, but I had brought along a couple of maps as backups! When she got hungry, she started looking at what food choices were offered, and she thought Rally's sounded good, so she asked the GPS to take us to the nearest one, which was listed as 3 miles away. When we took the exit it told us to take, it directed us to make a U-turn and drive 7.6 miles. Wait a minute, you must be kidding! So we scotched the Rally's idea and tried to find the next Sonic. Robyn put in the actual address of the next Sonic, and we followed the directions, which seemed rather nonsensical...and it was still telling us to go somewhere else when we pulled into the Sonic that we saw with our own eyes. I told Robyn that I'm not trusting the GPS to find food any more, ever again! We also asked it to find us a Shell station at one point, and it led us off the highway a couple of miles and was telling us to "go 2.7 miles and make a U-turn" when we pulled into a Shell station that we found.

Well, this story is too long, but the short ending is that we did get home without too many detours. We were on the road for 12 1/2 hours that day and very happy to pull into our own driveway!