Something you may not know about me, but I’m hopeless with navigation. Even with a GPS on board I get lost. I mean not lost, but edge-of-the-earth lost. This happened last Sunday when I went to pick up my mom from the airport in Strassbourg. She’d been to visit my sister in the south of France and flying France-to-France is a lot more convenient (no layovers) and way less expensive. Weird because the Strassbourg airport is only an hour further than the Stuttgart airport, but I digress.
I got there in record time, no traffic on a Sunday, straight autobahn to motorway. Boom. There. On time. I loaded up my mom & back home we went. Everything was smooth sailing, till right around Baden-Baden my GPS told me to leave the autobahn. Now, she usually does that when there’s traffic ahead, and I do love the backroads through the Schwarzwald (black forest) to my house. So I got off the autobahn.
Sadly my GPS did not know that there were six million and one umleitings (detours) in Bad Herrenalb. Umleitings that had me driving in circles. Thankfully we had tons of time, it was a beautiful day, Bad Herrenalb is totally gorgeous, and we had no kids. However. After driving the same circle three times I did get a wee bit frustrated. So I decided to ignore the nice GPS lady & head in the general direction of home.
In no time I’d left civilization behind us. We were truly in the middle of the Schwarzwald, surround by trees, cool air, a fox, some flowers and little to no road. Occasionally we lost GPS completely, sometimes we almost lost the road completely. After about an hour we started running into tiny white signs. Signs so tiny I had to drive right up (almost hit the pole drive-right-up) to read them. Luckily they read “Bad Wildbad”. I know where Bad Wildbad is! More importantly, I know how to get home from Bad Wildbad.
We continued on tiny, almost-not-roads for another 40 minutes and then, suddenly, the forest parted and civilization appeared. As well as a sign that we were not supposed to drive those tiny roads I’d been driving for the last couple of hours. Ooops.
I am truly not sorry we got so lost and broke the law in the process. We had a gorgeous, perfect, wonderful afternoon. Getting lost is pretty awesome.
I can totally sympathize !!! you are my twin …. I am the same way and have been in the same sort of situation except I had two little ones, one very sick along with me and hardly any gas left and it got dark because it was winter. I finally found I was on a road I recognize except I was going in the opposite direction I needed to go so had to get off and find the onramp for the other direction which lead me to a gas station etc etc …. I always carry maps with me, never rely on GPS …. trying to remember N,S,E,W is impossible for me and I have to remember which side the sun is setting on to know it’s west … glad you made it home … SuCanDo
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