Seems like this subject comes up allot around here
! Still old school for me(mostly)! I had a job with the BLM before GPS that required I know where I was at (most of the time) so I could record what I found so we manage, etc., it properly. My major recreation was/is backpacking where again map reading skills we also required if you expected to come back in one piece. There is also something about sitting down with a bunch of maps and planning out a trip somewhere and then heading out and using those maps and a compass and straight edges to get somewhere. Maybe it's the feel of the paper or something ( still read real books not E-books). All that said, GPS made things much easier as long as you remembered to have back up batteries and could see the sky! I still carry an old Garmin GPS as a back up to my paper maps and it never hurts to know where you are in the checker boarded lands (fed/state/private) many of us play in. As some have said, GPS has a use in cities and the such, but I don't go there unless I have too!
Many people who do not regularly play where we do ( and some who do), also do not understand about using maps in general. I don't know how many times I got stopped over the years my some lost hunters, camper or someone who took the wrong turn out there asking where they were! A quick and funny story. A while back we had a dude ranch (of all things) that provided the "Cowboy" experience to people from back east and the world I guess. Anyway, part of the experience was to go on a real trail drive with cows, cowboys and all the trimmings; because most of the drive was over BLM land they needed a permit from us. We then worked with the ranch and meet them out there at their camping spot and gave some talks about the area, history, etc.,a good learning experience for the greenhorns about life out west. Our area has a very rich history of early trail drives from the California Central Valley to the mining camps in Idaho and Montana and the gold fields of Nevada.
Well one time, some of our guys went out to the camping place to meet the herd. They waited and waited and waited ....and no herd! So my word, we know they left they ranch so I guess we had a lost herd out there somewhere on the range. So the call went out and everyone started looking for the lost herd and they eventually found it. It seemed that the trail boss took a wrong turn somewhere-the normal story-no need of a map, much less GPS, he'd been that way a thousand times (something we have been guilty of too). Yep-we all can make mistakes, and in this instance no harm was done, so no new folk songs about the lost herd wandering around the high high deserts of the Great Basin (no new ghost riders in the sky)
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Smoke