Google Maps in Dead Zones

My wife and I just completed a lengthy road trip to Glacier National Park. I knew we would put a couple thousand miles on the car so we rented one instead of taking a vehicle of our own. Besides neither my wife nor I have cars that get very good gas mileage. We purchase cars more for snow driving than summer and that makes them less than ideal for long drives.

As long as you stay on an interstate road, you are pretty much guaranteed to have mobile service the whole trip. What happens when you venture off into less-traveled paths? Well I can assure you that we had hours of travel in Montana with absolutely no mobile coverage whatsoever. I wondered what would happen in Google Maps and now I know.

I often complain that some software applications were written by people that never got full credit on their homework assignments in college. There are two companies where that is not the case: Apple and Google. Generally those guys know their stuff and this road trip proved that. Most of the time we would lose service and the app kept plugging along seamlessly. This became impressive when we could still see our car on the map. My guess is that the Google Maps app caches a number of map tiles in the surrounding area before you drive into coverage-less areas.

No it was not perfect. There were several instances in Glacier where the car appeared to be driving significantly to the right of the road. We seemed close enough I didn't worry about it. We also drove into some areas where the map showed nothing. For the most part it worked pretty well.

Google Maps turned into a lifesaver when we drove into Canada. The Toyota Corolla did not have a dual-unit speedometer. It only showed the current speed in miles per hour. That doesn't do much good when the speed limit is posted in kilometers per hour. Fortunately the moment we hit Canada, the units in Google Maps switched to metric and showed us our speed as captured in the GPS. I could see that 80 kph actually works out to 51 mph. I also kept track of the appropriate speeds for 60 kph and 40 kph. Those are the speed limits we encountered on the curvy mountain roads in in Waterton National Park.

The one letdown of trying to use Google Maps in dead zones is having it inaccurately provide your estimated arrival time over a lengthy drive. We started the drive with phone service and it had us arriving at home around 6pm. We drove into a dead zone and that time shot up to 6:30pm. We got back in service range and it came back down to 6pm. That happened a few times on the drive and so the second time, it didn't surprise me as much.

Overall Google Maps is a great application. We used it constantly to get around and keep from missing the turn on the small road to our cabin we rented. Without it we would have made quite a few U-turns. Furthermore it impressed us with how it worked even without mobile phone coverage. 

Planning a Road Trip

Last year my wife and I headed to Mt. Rushmore on a road trip. We did a bit of planning before we left but really had no idea what the trip would be like. We made reservations to ride an old steam-engine train and made sure to have hotel reservations when we got to town. Otherwise we didn't stress about filling every second with activities. The trip turned out to be wonderful and we had a great time.

This year we decided to do another road trip and will head to Glacier National Park. We made our hotel reservations back in March and will be staying in some cabins right at the entrance. While visiting Dinosaur National Monument a few weeks ago, we picked up our annual National Parks pass so we already have that taken care of. Last night we sat down and did a bit more planning so we have some ideas of activities to keep us busy.

First I pulled out our National Geographic book with information about all of the National Parks in the United States. That is a great resource to get an idea of what there is to do in Glacier National Park. As can be expected with physically printed media, there is a lot that is out of date. Fortunately a lot of information is still valid.

Next we pulled out the laptop and brought up Google Maps. That is such a great tool for looking at driving distances and times. We mapped the route from our house to the park. It will take almost 10 hours and so we will break up the first day and only drive part way. As with our Mt. Rushmore trip, we won't worry about hotel reservations that first night as we don't know when we will decide to stop driving. I don't know if I want to try to make it to Butte or will stop early in Dillon. There are lots of options in either location.

I have a cousin living in Somers, Montana and so I sent her a text message letting her know that we may stop in on our second day of the trip as it is on the way. My wife has an aunt living in Eureka, Montana about an hour outside the park so we sent her a text as well. It is nice to be able to visit extended family on such a trip.

Lastly we looked at all of the things to do in the park. There is a lot to see and some of it can be done in a car but the majority requires hiking. Then there are the option of horseback and boat rides as well. We created a rough itinerary of interesting things to do. As the park is combined with Waterton Park in Canada we decided we want to bring our passports to facilitate a border crossing, should we decide to do that. We also looked at the weather to help us decide the clothing to bring. Right now, highs are in the mid 60's and so we will be sure to pack appropriate jackets and pants, not just shorts and t-shirts.

I now feel prepared for the trip we will take in the next week or so. While I still have a printed road atlas for the United States, I appreciate being able to use the Internet to plan road trips. Furthermore after looking up directions, Google Maps wanted to know if it should send directions to my phone. After all, once in the car, that is how we will navigate. We still have some time though so I will pass for now. 

Finding Stuff with Supply Chain Shortages

Yesterday I posted about not being able to find 1-inch chlorine tablets for my wife's new hot tub. Today I took a more scientific approach and was able to locate them. Naturally I promptly went down and purchased a 2-pound pack of them. How did I do it? I resorted to old-school technology and was reminded about how we did things before the ubiquity of the Internet.

We have a pool-supply store close to our house and it is across the street from where my wife works. Before going into the office she stopped by the store to see if they had what we needed. Nope, they did not. She sent me a message about being unsuccessful and I went to work trying to locate the tablets. In the old days when dirt was new and dinosaurs still roamed the earth, we had these nifty little books known as the Yellow Pages. If you needed anything, like chlorine tablets, you would look up all of the pool supply stores in the area and call them one-by-one.

The Internet-era method of doing the same thing is to open maps.google.com and set the size of the window to be how far you are willing to drive. Next enter what you are looking for in the search field. When I pulled it up today, I zoomed out a bit as I was willing to drive rather far and then put "Pool Supplies" in the search field. It brought up a bunch of different companies. Hovering over the red pins with my mouse provided more information about them. I didn't worry about calling any of the pool contractors or builders and only focused on supply companies. Fortunately all of the listings had phone numbers and so I started calling them.

The first place I called knew exactly what I was looking for and explained that they only had powdered chlorine, not tablets. The next place didn't have them either. My 3rd call was to a wholesale distributor and they didn't sell to the public. I politely asked if they knew someone that might have what I was looking for and he gave me a lead. Unfortunately they were not listed in my Google search and so I had to look them up by name. I found their phone number and gave them a call. They had the 1-inch chlorine tablets in stock and so I jumped in the car and drove down to the store.

Interestingly I was the only customer in the store. I told the salesperson that I had just called him and he immediately went to the shelves and pulled a container from the shelf. He had plenty of supply if I needed more but I want to start with one. Besides, now I know where to go to get more.

Online retailers like Amazon are great for bargain hunting, especially if you don't mind waiting a few days for your order to arrive. Unfortunately I would have had to wait until the end of January because of supply-chain issues. Making a few calls got me what I needed today for exactly the same price as listed on Amazon. No, I didn't get free shipping as I had to take my time, drive to the store, and use about $3 in gasoline. After searching for several days, that is a bargain. While it may be tempting to use Amazon for all of your shopping needs, sometimes it really is better to buy local. Now to go set up that hot tub.

Google Maps Mislead Me

My wife and I just completed a ski trip at Winter Park in Colorado. We opted to drive in order to save money as the savings in travel time turned out to only be an hour or so vs. flying. Before setting out I checked Google Maps to see the fastest way to get there and back. I had 3 possible routes to use with only 8 minutes separating the quickest 2. I decided to take US 40 from Salt Lake all the way to Winter Park on the way out as it indicated it would be the fastest way.

The drive to Winter Park went well and we arrived a little after dark. The travel time came very close to Google's estimate. We checked into our on-hill condo and enjoyed being able to wake up late and walk over to the gondola as the resort opened. Eventually our 3 days of skiing came to a close and it came time to return home. This time I decided to take the alternate route. Yes it added 30 miles to the trip but was only supposed to add 8 minutes and allowed us to take I-80 back to Salt Lake.

On the way out, we had to be very careful as US-40 is mostly 2 lanes and full of wildlife. In other words, you have to watch out so you don't hit a deer and ruin your car. This makes exceeding the speed limit extremely unwise.

Taking a different way back turned out to be very scenic and we got to see a part of the country we had yet to visit. Once we got on I-80, we simply turned on cruise control at 80 miles per hour as that is the speed limit most of the way. I didn't expect to get to Salt Lake until 7:30pm based on the time estimate given by Google Maps. We stopped once for gas and then another time for 75 cent ice cream cones in Little America (highly recommended). Imagine my surprise when we pulled into our driveway an hour before we were supposed to. I like it when Google Maps is wrong sometimes. Now I only wish I had known that on the way out as we might have gotten into Winter Park before nightfall.

Google Maps vs. Apple Maps vs. Waze

Several weeks ago I got stuck at the bottom of Little Cottonwood Canyon in Sandy, Utah waiting to get up to Alta ski resort on a snowy Saturday morning. On most days the traffic to get to the ski resort is fairly mild. Throw in a snowstorm the night before and a lot more people will try to go skiing because of the fresh powder. If there is too much snow then avalanches become a problem and the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) has to ensure that the road is safe for others before letting anyone up the canyon. This is the situation my wife, son, and I found ourselves in.

My son decided to run a very simple test: which smartphone application provides the most accurate estimation on when you will arrive at your destination? We had 3 smartphones in the car and so one checked Google Maps, another Apple Maps, and the last one Waze. Pick the one you think provided the most correct answer and then continue reading. The answer may surprise you.

Having been stuck in a similar situation before, we all had a rough idea of how long it would take us to get up to the ski resort and so my son rattled off the time from Google Maps: 51 minutes. Normally it would only take us 10 minutes from where we were at the time. Next he checked Apple Maps and it said 21 minutes. That was the answer we wanted to hear but we knew it was too optimistic. Finally he checked Waze and got a 41 minute time, but with a caveat. Waze redirected our route and used some side streets to get us the middle time. We did not want to change our route and stuck to our intended path up the canyon.

We got to the bottleneck of traffic and saw how Waze would have routed us around it. We also saw that had we followed the new path, we would have been redirected and not been allowed up the canyon. Police were standing in the middle of the intersection and not allowing cars from the alternate path to proceed through the intersection towards the ski resort. This is an anomaly and nothing in Waze would have know about the redirection.

We continued up the canyon at a slow pace because of all the cars wanting to go skiing. Ultimately Google Maps gave us the most correct number as it took us 49 minutes from the point we checked all 3 apps for estimated travel times.

Is this proof that Google Maps is better than Waze and Apple Maps? No, it is just one case. Normally I would have guessed that Waze would do a better job as that is what I have been told. Ultimately each trip can be different and affected by a number of variables. For this trip, Google Maps performed better than the others.

Road Trip 2014

I am back in the Bay Area but only for one night. I flew out this morning and will be driving my car back to Utah tomorrow evening after work. For past road trips, I have wanted to leave work early to get an early start on the drive. Experience has taught me I am better off waiting until 7pm so I don't have to fight traffic from San Francisco to Sacramento. It can seriously add 4 hours to the drive.

My wife is laughing at me as I am working extra hard to be prepared for this trip. This evening I gathered with one of my co-workers and analyzed the traffic patterns out of the area using Google Maps with the traffic setting turned on. My co-worker even showed me how to look at statistical averages as it has been raining today and there were more than the normal numbers of accidents.

Rain in the area means it is snowing in the mountains. The car I am driving back is a 1998 Jeep Cherokee and one of the best four-wheel drives I have ever owned. It also has relatively new tires with excellent winter tread and so I should not be too concerned about the snow. I shouldn't be, but I am and so I am checking the Caltrans website that has cameras showing the conditions along the road. I have driven I-80 many times and so I know where the trouble spots are. Yes there is snow on the road and even an accident or two. However there doesn't seem to be a long line of cars because the road is closed, so that is a good sign.

The weather tomorrow will play a huge role in my trip and so I am checking out the my favorite website at www.weather.gov. While I may not appreciate some parts of our government, they do a very good job of providing weather information. Right now there is a "Winter Weather Advisory" for the first part of my trip, a "Special Weather Statement" for the middle of my trip, and a "Hazardous Weather Outlook" for the end of my trip. I could probably postpone my trip by a day if I need to, but the weather forecast doesn't seem to be improving over the next week and I don't want to hang out here too long.

Normally I drive all the way through without stopping. As it is winter and cold outside, I don't want to get somewhere in the middle of the Nevada desert and be so tired I have to pull over and try to sleep. I also have Kayak open and am looking at hotels in Winnemucca which happens to be the half-way point of the trip. I don't see any super cheap rates and so I won't be making any reservations. However if I come across something a little less expensive than $65 along the way, I may just pull in and get a good night's rest before continuing in the morning.

Yes my wife is right and I am probably over thinking this trip. I just want to make sure I get home safe and sound. After all, when something goes wrong on a road trip in the middle of the summer, you don't run the risk of freezing to death or having other cars slide into you.

To Bike or Not to Bike

Last weekend I drove my car back to Salt Lake from San Francisco. I only got pulled over once, when I stopped in a small Nevada town to get gas. The officer was nice enough when he realized I was just trying to get gas and use the restroom. He let me off with a warning. Otherwise the drive was mostly uneventful.

I drove my car back because it is time for the annual smog and emissions check. I could license the car in California, but I don't have a mailing address there nor do I want to pay the massively larger licensing fee. My plan was to drive the car back to California this weekend once the licensing is taken care of.

Now the question is if I want to bring the car back at all. I ride my bike to and from work so I really only need the car for two reasons: trips to the airport and trips to Scout meetings on Mondays. The airport problem can be solved with public transportation. It really cuts into my days, but it works. The only remaining issue is getting to Scouts.

In an effort to promote a "greener way of thinking", Google maps now has the additional options of getting directions using public transportation, walking, or riding your bike. I did a quick search to see how difficult it is to get from my office to the Elks Lodge in Redwood City, where we have our Scout meetings and it is only 10 miles. Amazingly, taking public transportation takes the same amount of time as riding my bike. I might as well ride my bike.

Several years ago I used to ride my bike 18 miles each way to work. That amounted to 36 miles of cycling every day. I loved it because I could eat as much food as I wanted. I never had to worry about being on a diet because I was constantly burning more calories than I could take in. The only problem was when we moved offices, I continued to eat as much as I wanted. In an effort to drop a few pounds, I'm thinking it is time to leave the car in Salt Lake and use the bike as my sole means of transportation in California. Maybe it is my starving stomach talking, but I think I could get used to eating more than I am right now.