December 9, 2024

GPS – Directions.. Still a guy’s thing…

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The day started out with pretty simple and straightforward ambitions. Drive from our Santa Clara hotel along PCH up to the Walt Disney Museum in the Presidio part of San Francisco, and after that drive up North to view the town of Bodega Bay where Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds was filmed.

The Lexus IS350 has of course a navigation system, and the female voice in there had before done a reasonably good job, although, I hasten to add, she did seem a bit slow in the sense that she sometimes announced turn offs at the very last second. Thus far though, I had known the route so well from earlier trips that I hadn’t fallen for it.

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The GPS voice was of course not pleased when I steered of the indicated freeway route, and opted to drive over to the west to pick up PCH. After about 10 minutes of her harassing me with routes how I could most easily get back onto the route she preferred, it was admittedly getting quite annoying. While driving, it is impossible to find a way to get her to understand that I will not take her preferred route, but will stick to using the PCH. It took her about an hour to finally ‘get’ it, and by then we were already within the San Francisco city limits.
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After our visit to the very impressive Walt Disney Museum, and a little look around the Presidio, we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and made our way up North, initially over the 101 and later turning off West to get to the coast and PCH. Turning onto Highway 1, it was clear that the drive along the coast was going to be far less sunny than the drive had been until then.

After a few miles we reached the town of Bodega Bay, and then were through it. Yes, it is that small. So I. Made a u-turn and attempted to find the locations again, but nothin looks remotely like it was in the movie.

Having been thoroughly disappointed with that, I decided it might be more interesting further North, since I had seen before that there were several Nature Parks along there. Being a up who has lived in the US for quite some time now, I was also convinced that the further North I would drive, there would at some stage be a turn off going East again, thus allowing me to get back onto the 101 and make our way to Sacramento.
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The weather changed substantially, even giving thick fog at some parts, and with very winding stretches that, where we could see, gave us beautiful but also eerie panoramas.
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I have to admit that the further North I drove, the further the distance to our Sacramento destination was indicated on the GPS, consistently recalculating and consistently indicating that the road would need to go South, not North. Having driven about 50 miles North of Bodega Bay, we got rather peckish, and with no turn off West in sight, we stopped at Gualala, and had a brilliant BBQ dinner at the local BBQ restaurant, worthy of mention of a Food Network Guy Fiery show. The waitress was more than willing to give me driving directions, and when I expressed that I was looking for a way East close to here, she said everyone there was too….. Enough said… I had to give in to the GPS system being correct, and my male logic failing… It was a worthy drive though, with good food at the turning point.

Source: amcrest.com/gps-trackers-tracking-devices.html

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