I am directionally challenged. Knowing which direction is which does not come naturally to me like it does to my husband, Kenn. I can work out directions if I know the time and can see the sun but that method isn’t particularly helpful in bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic. In spite of my directionally challangedness my primary function during our travels over the years has been that of navigator. (Many of our biggest traveling arguments have revolved around navigation. Translation: my hubby refusing to follow the directions given.) Map apps were a life changer for people like me.

Over the years, Google Maps has been our go-to map app. Prior to our road trip in 2019 Kenn decided that we should give Waze a try. It took me a bit to get the hang of Waze, but once I did, I really liked it. There are a wide variety of voices to chose from; my favorite was Kate with her proper British accent. (I thought Cookie Monster would be cute. I was wrong. Adding “om nom nom” after everything drove me nuts so the Cookie Monster voice was in use for less than a minute.) Waze has a game-like vibe that allows you to unlock achievements by collecting “candy” for various actions. Waze showing our speed in comparison to the current speed limit was helpful even though it wasn’t enough to keep us from getting a speeding ticket in the mail from Sioux City, Iowa a couple of weeks after we got home. (insert facepalm here) I also like the capability for users to mark and unmark things such as accidents, debris in the road, etc. in real-time. In my opinion, Waze also does a much better job with pronunciations; Google Maps garbles the simplest of names much less complicated ones. The biggest problem we had with Waze was that it relied on the availability of a cell signal instead of GPS. There are a lot of places in this big, beautiful country where there is no cell service; since we were traveling through a lot of those areas, we eventually had to revert back to Google Maps in order to have reliable information.

One of the biggest problems with map apps in general becomes apparent when we are towing our travel trailer. When towing we avoid interstates and big cities as much as possible. However, map apps interpret “avoid highways” as “please take me down every crappy side road possible”. We’ve had Maps try to route us down roads that specifically forbid travel trailers, fire service roads, and a road leading under a railroad track with insufficient clearance for our travel trailer – this in spite of the fact that within sight distance, less than a block away, was a road that went over the railroad tracks. So far, we’ve been able to avoid these potential fiascoes. I’m waiting for the day we make the local news in some town because we’ve brought traffic to a complete halt due to following the directions of our map app. In my opinion, what we really need is either a separate app for those of us towing or a towing option in the current apps that is smart enough to allow us to avoid interstates and those roads that aren’t travel trailer friendly. App developers, are you listening?

Have you had any harrowing experiences due to map apps?

UPDATE: Since I wrote this post I have discovered an app called CoPilot RV that I will be testing out during our trips over the next few months. I’ll let you know what I think.