Lost and Afraid

Apple Maps are crap.  I have discovered this the hard way after driving winding circuitous routes through the byways of eastern North Carolina.  First, my phone forced me to use Apple maps, then it kept changing my predetermined route on the sly. Everyone knows Google maps are the best (cue lonely island), but neither my phone nor Kristin's (both not surprisingly Apple products) will run the Google maps app without overheating and draining battery like there is no tomorrow.  On our trip to Norfolk, we had started with Kristin's phone running Google maps to get us there.  However, about 20 minutes into the trip we realized her phone was running quite warm and had almost no battery left.  We turned it off to let it rest and tried to pull up the directions on my phone, but T-mobile doesn't care about country people.  I have zero signal outside of urbanized areas.  We, therefore, had to resort to using an actual map on the fly and hoping to get there.  Upon leaving Norfolk, we discovered a cool feature to the maps on my phone though.  If you can start your route somewhere with a good signal the phone will memorize the route and maintain contact with gps throughout the entire journey even if there is no signal.

With this new found knowledge I thought we were set for future trips.  So, a few months later when we were starting off on a quick trip to Wilmington for Kristin's birthday I started ahead.  Before we left the house I plugged in my final destination, picked my preferred route of the three given options, and away we went.  Things started off fine.  We left Greenville heading towards La Grange and then the highway beyond.  However, a funny thing happened on the way to the station.  We arrived in Kinston.  I didn't remember that being on the route I chose.  Then things got even weirder.  We kept taking smaller and smaller backroads and backtracking through the boonies until we finally popped out on I-40 miles further from Wilmington than I had planned.  I chalked it up to me having accidentally touched the wrong route and moved on.  We had a great time in Wilmington and were all too soon getting ready to head back home.  This time I paid extra attention to the chosen route and made sure that I selected the one I wanted. But you know what that stupid map did? It tried to take me back the same way I came.  I noticed as we were heading down I-40 that suddenly it was calling for me to head way on up and take the same exit I had on the way down.  That tricky little thing was morphing the route on me midstride and of course I didn't have a signal so I didn't have a bit of say in where we were going.  I kept ignoring it and trying to make my own turns only to have it try to force me back to its preferred route.  All I can figure is that Apple has some deal set up with the town of Kinston to drag all unsuspecting travelers through in hopes that they will stop and spend money.  Well it didn't work on this guy and I'm on to you now Apple maps!  We got a car with a navigation system now so you're on the outs!