This is primarily a travel blog in which I write about traveling in our motorhome. Our travels have

Nacogdoches, TX, United States
I began this blog as a vehicle for reporting on a 47-day trip made by my wife and me in our motorhome down to the Yucatan Peninsula and back. I continued writing about our post-Yucatan travels and gradually began including non-travel related topics. I often rant about things that piss me off, such as gun violence, fracking, healthcare, education, and anything else that pushes my button. I have a photography gallery on my Smugmug site (http://rbmartiniv.smugmug.com).

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Lost and Found

I wasted most of the day doing nothing before we went to dinner with 5 of the other couples who are with us in Mission.  The chosen restaurant was an Italian one, Milano's, in Weslaco, about 30 minutes away.   We rode with Gary and Sonia but somehow got separated from the pack.  We had never been to Milano's but we had the address and I had the Tom Tom USA GPS app on my iPhone.  We followed its directions and became completely lost.  We double checked and confirmed that the address was entered correctly, however when the "you have reached your destination on the left" was announced we were no where near anything resembling a restaurant.  As a matter we were in a rather seedy looking area.  The restaurant was on West Pike Boulevard but the GPS had put us on East Pike Boulevard and was directing us to drive further east.  I pulled up Google Maps on the iPhone and entered the address but that only seemed to confuse us more.  Gary stopped and tried to enter the address into the truck's built-in GPS but the GPS wouldn't cooperate.  It said something like we were in an unmapped area and thus couldn't get to the restaurant from where we were.  We were literally driving in circles while trying to make sense of 3 different navigation programs.  During this time Gary received two calls from the main group, already at the restaurant and wondering where we were.  A few minutes later I received a call on my phone from the group and they helped with the directions so that we finally found the restaurant.  It turned out that East Pike Boulevard was north of and parallel to US 83 while West Pike Boulevard was south of and parallel to US 83.  It would have made more sense to name them North and South Pike Boulevard instead of East and West.   Better yet, one of them shouldn't have been any kind of Pike Boulevard as they weren't even connected to one another.  It didn't make any sense and even confused all 3 GPS's.

On the way back to the RV park we also took a wrong turn and ended up on the end of a dead end street with 2 Chihuahuas staring us down in the middle of the road.  Gary blinked first and backed up.  By the time we made it back to the RV park it was too late and I was too tired to post another butterfly lesson.  I'll do better tomorrow.