When The Gps Leads You Astray....., What scrapes have you gotten into from "obeying" your GPS? Options

[DXSMac]

I am staying at Jacks Landing in Grants Pass. Nice RV park! If you ever stay here, I have two GPS tips for you.

The park is located on Morgan Lane. When GPS tells you to turn at Hillcrest, OBEY IT! Even though you will pass right through Morgan Lane. Making this tactical error will cost you five minutes of having to go around the block. Ok, my bad.

NOW! If the GPS tells you to go around the La Quinta hotel, DISREGARD! Instead, weasle through the La Quinta and Jack's Landing is right there. If you "obey" your GPS at this point, it will cost you dearly. The GPS will take you up a narrow, steep road to a DEAD END. The only way out is to drive backwards, down the grade, and around a sharp, blind curve. When I checked in, I asked the desk clerk what the "body count" was for people who obeyed their GPS and went up the dead end street. TOO MANY TIMES.

Anyone else have a snafu with their GPS?

JJ

[HappiestCamper]

Haven't had my GPS long enough yet. So far it's gotten me to the right place every time (unlike my brother's directions to Disney World last spring).

When Yahoo first came out with maps, I bragged to my wife that I had directions to my uncle's place ready to go (this was 10 years ago). I learned quickly that they liked to put future roads on their routes.

[pianotuna]

Hi,

My GPS last summer very happily recalculated a route through the mountains in British Columbia--it was going to save me about 30 miles of travel. NEAT!

The road started out paved, for about 15 miles. Then it turned into well maintained gravel. Then wash board. Finally I came to a junction for the turn off. There was another vehicle there that had local plates on it. I waved them down and they said--"yes, there is a road--if you have a four wheel drive vehicle you *might* make it through" but don't rely on your cell phone to call for help.

I turned around, drove back over the washboard, gravel and pavement and got back on the "real road". Ah the sins of belief!

[DXSMac]

Hi,

My GPS last summer very happily recalculated a route through the mountains in British Columbia--it was going to save me about 30 miles of travel. NEAT!

The road started out paved, for about 15 miles. Then it turned into well maintained gravel. Then wash board. Finally I came to a junction for the turn off. There was another vehicle there that had local plates on it. I waved them down and they said--"yes, there is a road--if you have a four wheel drive vehicle you *might* make it through" but don't rely on your cell phone to call for help.

I turned around, drove back over the washboard, gravel and pavement and got back on the "real road". Ah the sins of belief!

Ok, your snafu ranks up there with my snafu. Both were terrifying, but in different ways. In my situation, the sharp corner I had to back around, um, if you got one wheel off the edge of the road, you would go over a bank. I know I came close, I don't want to know how close.

JJ

[RLM]

I prefer using a GPS program on my laptop instead of a stand alone GPS device. Nonetheless, I made the mistake of choosing the most direct route once. Ended up on a dead-end road trying to figure out how to turn a 40 ft rig around. I suspect that if had a GPS device instead of an expensive laptop, that device would now be road kill!!

[John S.]

My GPS has a setting for truck bus so I can stay on the big roads. It sometimes wants to take me another way but I also map it out by hand and look at a real map before going anywhere. I have covered 200K miles with it in the motorhome and it is good when you get close to the destination most of the time.

[BBear]

I must admit, I still map out the old fashioned way (mostly because I love to do it) rather than using a GPS I got as a Christmas gift a few years ago.

And, since my mapping has yet to stear me wrong and I actually enjoy the time it takes me to map out, I don't plan changing to GPS any time soon. Although, I do have an interest in perhaps using my GPS to do some geocaching sometime in the future.

When I did actually try out the GPS for the first time I did an "alternate route" because there is this mountain that I have to travel down near my home that I have no idea why but it scares the willies out of me (people out west would probably laugh at me, because in comparison to the mountains out there, this mountain wouldn't even classify as a molehill, lol....which also is very strange, I've traveled through the Rockies and the Smokies and was never afraid of any of the roads I traveled on or afraid of any of the mountains I went up and down, but this "molehill" terrifies me, so I wanted to see if there were any alternate routes for it and one came up and I gave it a try and the first couple of roads it led me down I was familiar with and then the roads went from pavement to dirt and then started getting narrower and narrower til I couldn't go any further because all what was left was a "trail" which is exactly what it is...it's a marked nature trail that takes you down over the mountain...I sat and laughed for a few minutes...then proceeded to disconnect my GPS and put it back in the box and it's been sitting on the shelf of my garage ever since, LOL!

[DXSMac]

BBears, oh my! Sounds worse than my "back down the hill" experience. I also believe that by mapping the old fashioned way (which I haven't done for awhile... ), you keep your brain active and alive. Which keeps you "young" intellectually. I have started relying more on the GPS instead of mapping it myself, and I think I lose brain cells that way.....

JJ

[rodman]

My wife and I decided to take a long weekend so we could take our new TT out on her maiden voyage to Bodega Bay. Our new trailer was 10' longer than the old one. We decide to use GPS since we had not been then before. Well if anyone has seen the movie The Birds, not much has changed in the area except the addition of a different way into Bodega Bay. GPS didn't know of the new way so we followed the instructions and made a turn onto what seemed like a decent road until we actually started to climb instead of decend toward the coast. After about 2 miles the road suddenly turned into a very narrow single lane. I really didn't want to try and back this thing down about a mile since there were no places to turn around 60' of truck and trailer. We decided to push on and after about another what seemed like 50 miles, actually only about 2 the road opened up to a small 2 lane road in an old part of town. It did actualy deadend right in front of the RV park. Had we kept going straight on our original course we would have been there in 10 minutes instead of an hour of white knuckle broken road. Did I mention 1 side was a fairly severe drop. I prefer to use maps, old ways, good ways.

[DXSMac]

My wife and I decided to take a long weekend so we could take our new TT out on her maiden voyage to Bodega Bay. Our new trailer was 10' longer than the old one. We decide to use GPS since we had not been then before. Well if anyone has seen the movie The Birds, not much has changed in the area except the addition of a different way into Bodega Bay. GPS didn't know of the new way so we followed the instructions and made a turn onto what seemed like a decent road until we actually started to climb instead of decend toward the coast. After about 2 miles the road suddenly turned into a very narrow single lane. I really didn't want to try and back this thing down about a mile since there were no places to turn around 60' of truck and trailer. We decided to push on and after about another what seemed like 50 miles, actually only about 2 the road opened up to a small 2 lane road in an old part of town. It did actualy deadend right in front of the RV park. Had we kept going straight on our original course we would have been there in 10 minutes instead of an hour of white knuckle broken road. Did I mention 1 side was a fairly severe drop. I prefer to use maps, old ways, good ways.

Oh my! That's why I don't dare haul a TT. I would have issues with that just on normal driving, let alone what you went through! And I know what you man by "severe drop."

JJ

[in80ways]

I bought a new Garmin this year when the Rand McNally trip planner routing that I had paid for online turned out to be a bit inaccurate.

The Garmin came with 2006 data which I paid to update to the 2009 data which unfortunately has proven not to have a lot of road changes which appear to have occured more than a year or two ago.

The Garmin has sent me on quite a few wrong turns on down some scary lonely roads as well as telling me to make a turn when there was no such turn to make. I loved it when my destination happened to be an empty field 36 miles from the true location I was trying to reach.

I have learned to question Garmin's every turn and if the turn is not on a State, US or Interstate Hwy, I better make sure that I am making the right choice. I wish that they would come out with an RV or Big Rig version that is smart enough to know that you don't want to drive on back country narrow roads with 10 MPH hairpin turns on a 12% decline. Thanks for your post.

[Lee and Fran]

I have been led astray couple of times. One of those was a shortest route that led me to a dirt road. Thanks but no thanks. The other was a road that no longer existed and led me into the parking lot of a business. Unless we get these things updated by letting the companies know we will always have these problems.

[Kirk]

Ours also has the preference settings when you plan a route, but the operator of ours has failed to make sure that all limits are proper because he moves it between the car and the motorhome. In one case, that foolish guy failed to change the setting back from auto to bus and planned a route. In included routing to an RV park which passed through a residential neighborhood with very steep, narrow streets and short turns. And all of this happened right at rush hour! When I finally arrived at the park I commented on the route that we had just come over.

The person at the desk told me that that route would be just fine for a car but that it would be impossible to get a motorhome or fifth wheel through it! It was not impossible, but there are still marks on my steering wheel from the tight grip I had on it but my wife got nearly all of the sweat stains out of the driver's seat. And I think that she put my undies in the trash!

[mpj]

From a campground owner: if there are ANY questions in your mind - contact the campground of choice - DO NOT RELY solely on your GPS.

Our park is not on GPS because we are located on a gravel road - it is short, but it is still gravel - with a city street sign. Usually GPS puts my customers 5 miles away on a road with a similar name, that is paved. We have driving directions on our web site. I know it is old fashion, but since new technology does not work, the old way still does!!

Happy travels! Thanks for listening.

[pianotuna]

Hi,

Why not post GPS coordinates in your directions? That will get past your access road not being "on the map".

From a campground owner: if there are ANY questions in your mind - contact the campground of choice - DO NOT RELY solely on your GPS.

Our park is not on GPS because we are located on a gravel road - it is short, but it is still gravel - with a city street sign. Usually GPS puts my customers 5 miles away on a road with a similar name, that is paved. We have driving directions on our web site. I know it is old fashion, but since new technology does not work, the old way still does!!

Happy travels! Thanks for listening.