Before MapQuest, you’d carry around a six county atlas, and a state map. If you had to go somewhere outside the metro area, you’d use the state map to get to the city, then stop at the first gas station you saw there to look at their map on the wall, or ask to look at their phone book for the map in there.
Ew, people.
Better yet, stop at the rest stop at the state border and pick up a free state map, which included insets of the large cities.
Pro tip: Those maps are still there.
They never restock them though. Somehow they are always out. (At least for the last few years they have been)
However, you can use OSM offline pretty easily and if you want a physical map you can print it. (For those of us who want control)
I know, but my phone is more convenient.
We had those big red atlases (Atli?) with the glossy covers from over half the US states, and smaller maps for all the counties in Virginia, NC, SC, and about half of TN. Huge ass stack of em in both door panels, under each seat, and several on the back seat. My brother collected them whenever he could. I think he’s still depressed he never finished his collection before giving up and finally getting a gps (only like 2 years before decent smart phone gps)
Atli
I’m pretty sure the proper form is Atlapodes.
Gonna split the difference. Atlapodii
The singular isn’t “atlus.” Atlases is correct.
Nope, up thread we figured out the correct form. Atlapodii.
Haha yeah. MapQuest. That’s old school, you silly geezers. Let’s get ya to bed.
Slowly folds up his road atlas hoping no one notices
Rand McNally with all the folds <kiss>
“Sometimes, you just had to stop and find someone to ask for directions…”
That’s honestly still a good answer. The locals know best
Bruh, I remember being excited to be the one to stay up in the passenger seat with the atlas overnight making callouts from the highlighted route. A child never felt so important, needed, and critical to the operation.
Wait until you find out what people did before computers
Had to make a stop at AAA to pick up an atlas before leaving for long road trips.
Although depending on where you are you could just memorize the route. A lot of the cross state travel is just a matter of getting on a highway and staying there for 10 hours. (At least in the US)
don’t forget the stack of quarters for when you inevitably have to stop and use a payphone
Pages? Like a static display made from dead trees?
AAA did the same thing. Yellow highlighter marked the route.
I used AAA Trip-Tik or whatever it was called, a couple of times driving cross country. Worked pretty well, actually.
Ripped map pages out of the phone book
Thomas Guide in the city, AAA Trip-Tik for road trips.
The short time after smartphones but before free EU roaming was the prime days of offline map apps that you specifically downloaded for each city
It was pretty great. Tried to have me drive through a city park lake once to get to a movie theater I hadn’t been to before. A+
I miss the days of Microsoft AutoRoute. No internet connection needed - but you were stuck with the map and routes present in the release version that was on the CD.
Printing was optional and encouraged!
You can use Open street map
I remember those days.
