Free Maps Online

Some families travel well. Not mine. When Zoe and Ella aren’t behaving like Curly and Moe in the back seat–finger jabs, nose tweaks and attempted first-degree wedgies–baby Clementine is performing one of her eerie, hour-long imitations of the Emergency Broadcast System. That’s why I decided to use the Web to help me navigate during my recent summer vacation. I figured that the more I knew about the route I’d be driving–how many miles to the destination, how far between rest stops, even how to get there in the first place–the better we’d be able to survive.

Four hours into our road trip, a few miles from a ferry that would free us from our car, a giant fly landed in the ointment. The turn-by-turn directions I had downloaded for free from Big Book had been, so far, flawless. But now the printout was advising that I detour to the south; all the traffic, however, was proceeding due east. What to do? Heed the computer’s advice, or follow the herd? Stupidly, I hadn’t packed an atlas or road map. “Ella pinched me!” someone shrieked in steerage. Tick-tick-tick. “Follow the traffic,” hissed My Wife Who Is Never Wrong.

I must report, comrades, that at the last possible moment, I betrayed the information revolution: I followed the traffic. That turned out to be a wise move. I subsequently consulted a paper map and can only conclude that the road I and my fellow travelers took hadn’t been built when Big Book’s database was created.

Clearly, I am not the only person burned by bad computer-dispensed advice. Map sites are only as good as their data, and roads have a way of changing. Indeed, on Switchboard’s mapsonus.com–which I consider the best of the freebie directions sites–users are asked to click on a form and agree not to blame the website for mistakes. “Our routes can be, well, creative,” the disclaimer advises.

Such fuzziness has hardly dissuaded road warriors. Dozens of sites offer free directions and related services and are thriving. During the past two years, the American Automobile Association has recorded a 7% drop in requests for its paper TripTik maps (those handy, personalized route maps that even tell you when you’re approaching the birthplace of the inventor of the mechanized reaper), even as AAA membership has increased. A spokesman attributed the dip to competition from the Web, and to the association’s Map ‘n Go software, a $60 navigation package that can be installed on PCs. If you want to get fancy, you can buy one of the car-based global-positioning devices, like StreetPilot GPS, by Garmin of Olathe, Kans., for under $550. Using signals from satellites, these devices tell you where you are and plot your course.

But for vacationing tightwads like me, the Web is the ideal solution. Trip-planning sites can offer immediate information that software, print maps and even GPS devices lack. At weather.com for instance, you get a forecast for your projected route. (My favorite among these kinds of sites is Intellicast’s Golfcast, which has among its many real-time forecasts weather maps that show “hazardous” conditions at golf courses.) At www.freetrip.com you can request a list of motels, restaurants, tourist traps and even military facilities en route. Note to inventors: what we really need is an affordable satellite link to the Web. That might even keep the back seat entertained.

Links to map sites can be found at time.com/personal You can watch Josh and Anita Hamilton on CNNfn’s Digital Jam, at 7:30 p.m. E.T. on Wednesdays.