Except at night.

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My phone has a flashlight. I avoid the slab at all costs. I use the GPS when driving on the slab. Especially useful in places like Charleston. At night I plan the next days route, write it on a post it and stick to the windshield bag.

tarheel

We put a paper topo to good use from the top of Haystack this weekend. We didn't have the trail description but we could see from the contour lines that the hike to Marcy was going to be easier than returning via the backside of Haystack. You can get these maps online but you'd better carry something that does not require a battery, a signal, or gentle use.

http://www.pickatrail.com/topo-map/m...-marcy-ny.html

I'm a map lover. Always have been. I even took a course in cartography once to learn something about how they are made. But the real reason is in the brain. Mine is heavily visual so that a map can help it see where I need to go far better than listening to verbal directions. I taught Undertoad to read maps very early on so that he could help me while I was driving. He did. Even at age 6. It is fun to read that when he had wondered off from my booth at the Central PA Arts Festival in State College, he went to the library and found the geological survey maps. His father was the editor of the Pennsylvania State geological map when the state made huge changes in it back in the 60's. So Undertoad's brain gets it from both sides.

If it's any consolation, Michigan is considered to be in the Midwest. It's so far north it's the only contiguous State from which you can go south into Canada, and it takes approximately four times as long to drive the most direct route to the west coast as it does to the east coast -and both are pretty direct.

Go figure :/