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While my sister and I were growing up, our grandfather took us car camping during the summers in western Virginia and West Virginia. Some of my favoriate car camping trips were to:

I am sure there were many other camp sites we camped at growing up, but after 30+ years, they have sliped the mind. We would usually go for a week to 10 days at a time and stay at a site for a couple of nights before moving on to visit the next camp ground. These trips were my exposure to learning to read maps and navigation even though it was navigating while my grandfather was driving. It turned out this was a great skill to learn and I have to contribute it to my better sense of direction and location awareness than most people seem to have. This was before cell phones were common as well as GPS units, so navigation was limited to using either state, National Forest maps, or in some cases we would use detailed USGS Topographic maps of the specific area.

Because of these experiences with my grandfather growing up, I still enjoy looking at and using maps either print or digital form. It seems with every cell phone now being able to be someone’s communication device for both text and voice, map, GPS, and navigation tool all in one, most people have become too reliant on their phones, especially in an emergency. This reliance has also caused people to become much less spacially aware than even twenty to thirty years ago. Smart phone map apps allow for your direction to be either fixed faving the top of the screen or changed so that the map remains fixed with the top of the screen being North. When the first scenario is selected, this removes all relative direction on the map and the earth because when one is traveling south, the map has rotated so that South is now facing the top of the screen. Unless constant awareness of which direction one is travling is maintained, it becomes very difficult to know which direction one is facing and if a turn to the right is to the North, South, East or West. If however, the map is always facing North and GPS is showing one travling South before a right turn is made, then it is much easier to know that one is now travling West after a turn to the right.