Read A Road Map Day

Happy Read a Road Map Day!  Yes… April 5 is Read a Road Map Day.

And yes… I am that old… I am “I’ve got the road map/atlas book open and I am seeing where we are going by turning the page” years old.  Ha ha ha…  before the phones with GPS, before printing off exact directions from the internet, there were road maps and atlases!

I remember as a young girl going on family trips going across country to visit my father’s side of the family, and I had the atlas book open looking to see where this road led to, and that road led to… my imagination was let loose!  I imagined what this little town might look like if we just went another inch or two on the map, and WHOA!  Just look at all of the possibilities when I turned the page!

My dad would make it mental, teaching moments.  “About how far away are we from XXX?  So we are going 70 miles an hour, how long will it take us to get there?”

As I grew up, the atlas book stayed in my father’s truck, in the pocket of the passenger door of the light blue 1978 Ford Custom pick up truck.  Once in awhile, I would pull it out, looking at the worn pages.  My imagination still turned on with each turn of the page.  The joy and wonder flickered as page by page I looked at towns I have yet to see in person.

After high school I didn’t have that atlas book… I purchased and used folded maps.  And gosh, I was not good at folding the map back to its original flat, folded state of being.  And at this point of my life, I just wanted to get from point A to point B.  The more I drove, the less time I had to dream about the different destinations.  I was driving, I had to pay attention to the road and my surroundings, right?

Then the computers changed how I got from point A to point B… and now our phones actually tell us while the watch on my wrist is gently telling me “hey!  It’s almost time to turn!”  while my children in the back seat sang songs from Wiggles early on… and now they sing K-POP.

Ah… what a trip down memory lane…  

So how old are you?  Phone GPS?  Car GPS?  Computer print outs?  Atlas book/folded maps?

Tell me about your early travel experiences!  Are you atlas book old or phone GPS old?