We really did

I enjoyed looking at the big map of my state and calculating the approximate time we would either pass a city, or arrive at our destination. It was fun. I was pretty close too!

I used to do something similar on my trips back from college, calculate my ETA based on the mile markers and my speed. I was damn near dead on, too!
- Hell yeah! I still do that on road trips to pass the time. Keeps things a bit interesting.
My parents used one of these to plan the vacations:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opisometer
- That’s really cool!
- I have one of those. They're useful for measuring distances on topo maps where pretty much nothing is a straight line.

Kids will never experience being stared at by people sitting on their porches while slow-driving through a seedy neighborhood because you read the map upside down.

Lol. True. I'm ild enough to remember my mother riding shotgun and navigating with that big-ass printed map while dad just followed orders.

How did they even reach places back then....I wouldn't find my way outta the garage without android auto and Sygic.

That was a major strain on a few relationships, some people are just terrible at directions.

I miss that. I remember it was normal seeing people on the side of the road, checking the map before continuing their trip.

I had my dad once draw a map from memory and I had to read that so my mum and I could go visit a relative in hospital. Those were the days.

If the trip was short, and roads in a grid (Midwest, not California), one could just memorize the major turns and wing it.

This is how some went hundreds of miles in the wrong direction. (Gotta cross check with city names.)

It's still more fun. I like using the offline maps mode on Google Maps and having to plan my routes.

Mate we used to navigate from large physical atlases. I remember having to pull out the state atlas and find page for the county we were in and then route a path and navigate my mom to our destination when I when I was like 12.