I love to study a map before I go to a new place to get the general lay of the roads. Recently visited someplace we’d never been, and stopped in several places (WalMart, gas stations) looking for a map of the area. Nobody sold them anymore, and when I asked I got the “Bless your heart” look, like I’d asked to buy a floppy disk.
That answers my second question.
GPS screens are just too small. If you are zoomed out you get no detail other than the interstates and if you are zoomed in you get no perspective that is especially helpful if you need to take an indirect route GPS would never find. For me it was ten miles in opposite direction to the traffic jams to get to an interstate. The GPS would have had me travel 40 more miles on the back roads to get to the interstate about three hours later.
I’ve got a DeLorme topographic road atlas for my state. It’s been invaluable for finding out of the way and off the beaten track places to camp and fish.
This is going to be a fun thread.
I also love maps and always sail with paper charts.
It is astonishing to me how clueless so many sailors are regarding anything that was commonplace knowledge...
I have an acquaintance who looked only at his GPS plotter as he ran a big trawler up the Delaware not long ago...
As if the plotter and AIS were going to tell him about the actual world around him, too.
I sat beside him and looked at his tiny pupils tracking the screen...
No lookout...
Spooky.
Google maps with satellite and street view is awesome. I have a box of street maps going back to the 1930’s. Some need updating.
AAA still gives away free folding maps if you are a member