A Women's RV Forum run by Women RVer's!

or GPS beware (as I've said for years):

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/0 ... 30623.html

Don't blindly follow your GPS!

guess better to be in the rig so they had food and potty and bed but you are so right need to check out the map as well
need to remember that
sheila

Been there, done that, there's a 911 tape to prove it!

VickieP wrote:Been there, done that, there's a 911 tape to prove it!

I'm so careful, but as stated in my blog of my trip to the national monument last weekend, i could easily have been in a bad situation ... We get complacent and too reliant on these lovely devices.

The same thing happened to my parents. That was the last time they used their GPS.

My GPS is made for RVs and I have it set to warn me about dirt roads, low bridges, etc but it has tried to send me the wrong way on occasion.

Would a paper map have been a better alternative? If not the GPS, what should you trust? I know mine has got me in weird places, but I'm not sure how to do it otherwise!!

I check my atlas. It's never tried to drive me into the ocean like my GPS has. And if it looks or feels wrong, don't do it. Stop and get out your atlas.

I use a combo of GPS, maps and mapquest if I can get on-line. I have a pretty good idea of where I'm going before I start the engine and use the GPS for telling me when I have a turn coming up, freeway changes that type of thing. When you put an address or city center in your GPS, you can do a turn by turn preview and see if that's the way you want to go.

I gave up on my GPS because it was almost always sending me on a wild goose chase.

When I was driving from the San Diego airport back to Lake Elsinore (which is on the 15), as I was on the 15 just near Escondido,(halfway to Lake Elsinore) it insisted that I turn off onto some exit and head east. Once I passed that exit, it recalculated and was Ok after that. I never used it the whole way back to Minnesota. I totally relied on Google Maps and my paper maps. The only thing I used if for was to find local stores, etc.

sharon wrote:I use a combo of GPS, maps and mapquest if I can get on-line. I have a pretty good idea of where I'm going before I start the engine and use the GPS for telling me when I have a turn coming up, freeway changes that type of thing. When you put an address or city center in your GPS, you can do a turn by turn preview and see if that's the way you want to go.

This is what I do too Sharon. I always start a trip with backup Mapquest directions for the entire trip. Also have my atlas on the floor next to me all the way. In May for my trip to and through Utah and Arizona, several times I chose the Mapquest route over the GPS.
Sandi

mapquest and Google maps rely on gps also, and also make some of the same mistakes

Our first rule of using GPS is, always use you own common sense because the gps uses rules while we have the brain to add common sense. We have had a few laughs at our GPS's expense. Like the time in TX when we chose (by checking an actual map) to go off freeway onto a highway and GPS kept telling us to turn on farmer Johns road to get us back to freeway. These roads it wanted us to take our 40 ft bus on were really and truly narrow dirt roads leading to various farms and actually were voiced vy GPS as so and so's farm road. It got pretty amusing since GPS seemed to refuse to recalculate and take the highway we were on into account. She really wanted us back on the interstate and kept telling us to turn for quite a few miles. And "she" was not even old enough to attribute it to electronic senility yet. LOL

In addition to my GPS, I rely on my eyes looking through my environmental scanner (windows). On occasion, I may have been overheard shrieking at my GPS when I have decided on my own route or "short cut".

We've had some really interesting times with the GPS....one of the most memerable was the time it took us down a two lane road where a bridge was out. Not really it's fault but there was a better way on a better road. Anyway...we had to off road through a corn field to turn the 40' Alfa around. wonder what the farmer thought the next morning.