Don't (Necessarily) Toss out Your Maps!

I've always liked maps and am fortunate to have a both a good sense of direction and a good memory for routes. This caused me to be a slower adopter and more cautious user than most of audio navigation aids. (I wondered at first if they would impair my memory of new routes. I have found that they do not.) From the Garmin device of yesteryear to the Waze app of today, I'd say they have their roles, but are no substitute for understanding where you are going.

Image by Pierre le Blond de la Tour, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Case in point: I had a Mardi Gras-related social obligation to attend yesterday in the French Quarter. I went to the same event last year, and allowed myself lots of extra time to get there since I was new to the area.

Good thing: Waze was uncharacteristically off the scent in that older, denser part of town, and I ended up having to call the owner of the pre-paid parking I'd bought and ... consult a map to find it. On top of that, the parking place I'd bought was in very tight quarters, and I reached it after passing a couple of lots with what seemed like acres of empty places in them.

This year, with some familiarity with the area under my belt and those memories, I realized I could probably find an easy-to-remember, stress-free route directly to the huge lot, which I knew from the prior trip to be a short walk from where I needed to go.

Great move!

As good as the combination of navigation and parking apps are for strange areas, they are not necessarily a match for a local's knowledge. While it is great to get directions by ear, freeing up one's eyes, there remains the matter of having to find street signs or other indications of where to turn (that may or may not actually be there), which I find stressful, on top of the lack of memory for any landmarks I might normally use.

(I am not a nervous driver, but I value calmness enough that I will happily take a slightly slower route if it is a more relaxed experience.)

As seen above, parking apps get the job done, but since they're, for example, (a) helping lesser-known lots get customers and (b) have only a few parameters (like distance from event or price) to go on, using one can result in missing a better overall alternative, as we see here.

This year, I looked at my map in advance and at a couple of scales. Viewing freeways caused me to discover that an exit and route I frequently use would get me pretty close to the huge lot, at a minor time expense that the bad layout of the Big Easy's obsolete freeways makes more than worthwhile.

At a closer scale, I confirmed that, while the huge lot was hardly the closest to the event, it was still only a short walk away. (I also found the best walking route to my event while I was at it.)

A few zooms later, I put together a sequence of five turns that I wrote down in large print even though I'd probably remember them anyway in the context of the street layout, which is nice grid.

It was a relaxing, scenic drive that got me there almost on time, despite my starting the trip 20 minutes later than I wanted.

I'll need to attend this event again, and the route is useful for other things, so I saved the map, but I probably won't need it in the future -- unless friends or family turn out to have a use for it. For that last possibility, I annotated an electronic copy of the map with the turn sequence.

-- CAV

P.S. I did miss a turn, but recovered easily. Looking at Google Maps street view later, I found a landmark (that I recalled from the drive because it was so distinct) that will help me make that turn the next time.