School is out, and summer is in full swing. So, once again, it’s time to cram into the family station wagon and head for the world’s largest ball of twine. Perhaps your destination is somewhere a bit more exciting, but the formula remains the same: cramped car + long hours of driving = road trip. The family road trip has existed as long as the car, itself, and although cars have gotten bigger, faster, and more comfortable over the years, not much has changed in how we get from place to place. What has changed is how we navigate.
In 1999, Benefon, a European telecommunications company, launched the Benefon Esc!, the first ever GPS enabled phone. It was marketed as an emergency phone and sold mainly in Europe. This was followed, in 2000, by an increase in the strength of GPS signals. Due to national security concerns during the Gulf War, the U.S. Department of Defense had been degrading all GPS transmissions, and once the restrictions were lifted the GPS industry exploded. Before long, there was a GPS in everything, from our phones to our watches, changing the very nature of navigation. Now, instead of looking over multiple maps, one can simply hop in the car and type in an address. The days of stopping to ask for directions are clearly coming to an end, but are the days of adventure gone, as well?
John Steinbeck once said that “a journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”
This begs the question: what happens when our GPS fails? Once, while traveling in Washington state, that very thing happened to me. I was traveling with my uncle, a seasoned traveler and member of the illustrious 50 states club. We had been visiting Mount Rainier, and staying in Yakima as part of a whirlwind tour of the Northwest. The plan was to spend one last day exploring the mountain, and then head for Seattle. However, due to some unforeseen snow in the middle of June, we were delayed. And instead of heading to Seattle, we made the decision to go east instead and look for a place to stay the night. So we loaded up the car, and instead of putting a destination in the GPS on my phone we thought we would just drive for a bit and look for an inexpensive hotel. We ended up traveling for a couple of hours with no luck, but after a day of being stuck in the snow, the desert seemed a refreshing change of pace, so we continued.
I remember dosing off for a little while and being woken up by my uncle. It was nearly 11 p.m., and we had still not found a place to stop. He asked me to look for nearby hotels on my phone, but when I pulled it out of my pocket I discovered it was dead. My uncle, being of a different generation, only had a flip phone, which was usually either dead or packed away somewhere. He had been relying on me to use my phone’s GPS to navigate for most of the trip, and without it I was helpless.
We ended up seeing a sign for a Best Western about half an hour later, but they were booked for the night. The night manager took pity on us and gave us the number for an inn located in the next town over. She let us use the hotel’s land line to call ahead. They had an open room and they gave us directions to get there. We arrived a little after midnight and went straight to bed. The next morning, we woke up to find ourselves in the town of Soap Lake, Wash., a small town surrounded by a beautiful lake of the same name. We decided to explore the town that we came upon through pure happenstance. Soap Lake was given its name for its high mineral content that gives is a slippery feel and is still regarded by many locals to have healing properties. All in all, it was an unforgettable little town.
Every day, new drivers get their licenses and learn to navigate using GPSs, but are we, the GPS generation, missing out on something? If, as Steinbeck said, “A journey is a person,” then are we robbing that person of their identity by focusing solely on the destination, or are we merely being more efficient? As someone who has been known to get lost on the way to the grocery store, I certainly feel more at ease with a GPS. However, if we truly want to experience a road trip, sometimes it is best to turn the GPS off and go where the road takes us.
Sources: techhive.com; innsoaplake.com.
