Camping Kick

My wife is a technophobe who married a cyberpunk geek.  With her treasured AAA membership, every time we drive by one of those stores, she can’t help herself and has to grab a stack of maps which she puts in stashes all over, behind seats, glove compartments and luggage. 

Me?  Since GPS and Google maps came out, I like knowing how far I am from my destination and being able to find out what’s interesting around me and with smartphones, everything is connected.  You have a friend on Facebook, with that app and a couple of clicks, you can call them, click on their address and get turn by turn directions to their house or even spookier, to their work, someone else is looking for their contact info, in less than 10 button pushes you can that zipped over to that friend without even typing in a letter (which I did earlier today in less them then I thought possible).  You can find good places to eat, times for movies, balance your check book and be in touch news just about anywhere.

But over the last few months, I’m getting a feeling how thin that cyber spherical is once you leave the highways and the online reviews.  The Brides maps are coming in handy, in fact, we have been buying the expensive maps from the National Parks because we need the detail when we’re out in the middle of nowhere.  Some of the roads we've traveled on, we've gone down and have only passed one or two cars in in a day of travel.  Yet, we’re still noobs out here compared to the folks who hike the John Muir trail.  

It is interesting going out to the edge of a map and seeing a road that goes in a mysterious way and finding where it leads.  We’ve had some grand adventures lately using this method and found things that we haven’t been able to find in the internet. 

I know we’re not the first people who have been to any of these places but we get the feeling that they’re rarely seen and from what we can tell, the people that see them don’t post them online.  Maybe I’ll show you something new.

Anyhow, here’s a video of our last trip and by the way, have I mentioned that I’ve been selected to transfer to NAS Whidbey Island in the spring?