And I need GPS, why?

I have another challenge for all of you out there who are smarter than I am. Who can convince me of the advantages of using GPS on a road trip? I cannot think of a single time when I said to myself, “Shoot, if only I had GPS I wouldn’t have driven down the wrong road and gotten myself lost again.”

I do say, very often, “Yes, I’m lost again.” But even my husband is ok with that, as his most common traveling phrase is, “You’re never lost if you can turn around.”

Oh, sure, maybe I have been late for a few meetings or have had people in my car get annoyed with me. But honestly, life is way too short to take the shortest path.

On my most recent road trip just last week, I think I did start to annoy my sister. Every time I went down a side road and didn’t know where I was, the first thing out of her mouth was, “Pull over and I’ll directions.” She even was willing to holler out the window and ask directions of the driver next to us stopped at a stop sign.

I do however hang my head in shame, thinking that maybe if I wouldn’t have horsed around so much, my sister wouldn’t have hit that deer after she left my house the night we got home. Sorry. I really am.

But look at some of the stuff we would have missed if I hadn’t strayed all those times. 

The Kid's Kingdom in Van Cleve Park, Gladstone, Michigan

An old church on some side street in Saginaw

I don't know what this is, some kind of maintenance building for the city water works, I think. Or a place to put prisoners on a hot summer day. This was next to Lake Michigan in Mackinaw City. 

This was in Lakeview Cemetery in Mackinaw City. We stumbled upon this while trying to find a good view of the Mackinac Bridge. 

I took this just as I was about to go on a morning run. The public library was right across the street from our hotel. As we were leaving the hotel a few hours later, they were changing the sign, so this had been a once in a lifetime photo op. 

This was walking too. Went across the covered bridge in Frankenmuth and found this beauty in an aviary in the middle of the grassy knoll. 

So, for all of you who swear by your GPS, tell me about some of the cool stuff you stumbled upon in a two-day road-trip?