Some notes on GPS quirks and New England eccentricities

Night before last we were coming back from our trip out on Cape Cod, and it was already dark but we were not afraid of not finding our way back to our campground, we had our "never-fail-always-get-you-there" GPS system that we bought before leaving Seattle. So we put in the name of the RV park – Bourne Scenic Park – and waited while it whirred and then started speaking to us in confident and commanding tones – "Drive to high-lighted route" – "In point two miles, turn right on Scenic Route Six," and so on. Now you must know, our RV park (you remember the picture of the bridge from the front door of our camper) was nearly under the Bourne Bridge on the bank of the Cape Cod Canal. Well, sure enough, GPS Inc. brought us to a little driveway that said "Bourne Recreation Area" and it was directly under the Bourne Bridge – on the opposite side of the canal from our park – it was the headquarters office of the company that operated the park!! Do you think Garmin would consider giving us a refund??

The system of town names and placements in this part of the U.S. is particularly weird . . . we headed for a restaurant whose address was in the town of West Dennis, heading toward the town of Dennis from the west, thinking we'd find it along the way – makes sense, right? Not on Cape Cod!! West Dennis is about ten miles SOUTH of Dennis, just a little EAST of the town of South Dennis! Dennis itself is on the north shore of Cape Cod, while West Dennis is all the way across the Cape on the south shore of Cape Cod. Well, at least, I don't have to live here.

As we were heading south from the town of Dennis, about five miles out, we came upon a sign saying "Welcome to Dennis," and we thought we had left Dennis a couple miles back.

Perhaps the most irritating feature of highway signage in all of New England is the total lack of advance notice – you pull up to a corner in the right lane only to then see a sign on the opposite corner saying your highway is turning left! Every change in a highway's direction is announced at the last corner, every entrance into a park, monument, etc., is announced no more than thirty feet from the entrance whether it's on the right or left – we've made more U-turns and "around-the-block" maneuvers in the last couple weeks than in all of our lives