Worst directions you were ever given (just for fun)

[Pegasus]

I'd love to hear some stories about the worst directions that you have actually been given.  My own favorite is being told by my grandmother the following for an area I was completely unfamiliar with:

"...then turn left where that girl was hit a few years back."

[Pegasus]

Oh, and just to balance, here is my favorite BEST directions ever received, from my brother, who apparently knows me too well:

Once you take the exit and get to the stop sign, it will FEEL like you want to turn right but you actually need to turn left.

He was correct!  It "felt" like right would be the correct direction. Weird.

[gardenmom5]

in a heavily wooded area....

turn at the big tree, where the road is kinda narrow.  go under the wires (all the wires are above ground) and around the corner to go down the hill.

 

tbh: I don't think I can repeat them as incomprehensibly as I received them...

[Valley Girl]

"You can follow the limo to the reception."

Said to me in pre-internet days by the groom, my in-law. The wedding was in a location I wasn't familiar with. DH was in the wedding and so rode in the limo. Nobody apparently told the driver someone would be following--or the driver thought it would be great fun to lose MIL and me.

He did.

Edited February 9, 2019 by Valley Girl
clarification

[gstharr]

If Google Maps is included, too many horrible directions for me to pick one.

[Ausmumof3]

I have probably given more horrible directions than I have received.  Don’t ask me for directions unless you want to end up like Hansel and Gretel 

[HomeAgain]

3 minutes ago, gstharr said:

If Google Maps is included, too many horrible directions for me to pick one.

This.
First time I drove across country with a GPS it told me to go through this extremely wooded area with narrow roads....and ended at a dock.  The gps assumed that a ferry was running 24/7 across the lake.

[teachermom2834]

I moved to a small town a few years ago. Things are still called by what they were 30 years ago. So, there is a middle school located in what used to be the high school. It is often referred to as “Old Small Town High” instead of it’s current name which doesn’t have the name of the town in at all. Very confusing when someone sends you there.

I get directions all the time that say something like turn where the elementary school used to be or where the church burned down. 

There was a local Christmas event that was even listed in the paper as located at “The Old Post Office”. Took me a long time online to figure out where the event was. The old post office has been a different government building for many years. 

Sometimes it is funny but mostly it reminds me I’ll never belong here 😞

[DawnM]

"You are going to make a right where the McDonald's used to be.  I think it is a Burger King now, or maybe a bank, I can't remember, but if you get to the place where that big tree came down in the hurricane, you have gone too far.  They might have removed the tree by now, I am not sure, but you will need to turn around if you go past that.  Oh wait, you know what?  I think you have to turn left where the McDonald's used to be, let me think about this.  Oh, and before you get to the place that used to be the McDonald's, you will pass that big area......."

It went on from there.  This was a city/town I had never been too before.  I finally told her to give me the address and I would look it up.  This was before the days of the internet too!  I used a paper MAP.

But I am a "go North on Smith Rd for 2 miles, and then turn West on Jones Avenue for 3.4 miles" type of person.

[Bambam]

If you don't count the incomprehensible directions given by Bostonians (it is very hard for me to understand their accent), it would have to be from folks in Texas. 

Turn left by the old Hobby Lobby. (Which, btw, had been a Kroger for at least 5 years, so why not refer to it as Kroger?)

This happens with regularity. I don't know if people here just don't accept the fact buildings change ownership or if they can't remember what business is there now. 

People here don't like my directions because I use north/south/east/west so I can be exact. Many don't seem to know their directions. 

[Selkie]

My FIL had a habit of being maddeningly vague when imparting any information, including directions. His standard answer when asked where something was: “It’s up on the hill.” Well, we live in a very hilly area and I can literally be in any location in our county and see hills all around, so that doesn’t really narrow it down.

Edited February 9, 2019 by Selkie

[MEmama]

23 minutes ago, teachermom2834 said:

I moved to a small town a few years ago. Things are still called by what they were 30 years ago. So, there is a middle school located in what used to be the high school. It is often referred to as “Old Small Town High” instead of it’s current name which doesn’t have the name of the town in at all. Very confusing when someone sends you there.

I get directions all the time that say something like turn where the elementary school used to be or where the church burned down. 

There was a local Christmas event that was even listed in the paper as located at “The Old Post Office”. Took me a long time online to figure out where the event was. The old post office has been a different government building for many years. 

Sometimes it is funny but mostly it reminds me I’ll never belong here 😞

This is how it goes here, too. Some days I find it amusing for its provincialism, other times annoying for the same reason. 

By far the worst was relying on GPS to get us from Cambridge to Concord, MA (should be a fairly straight shot, except that no roads in Boston make sense). It had us driving in random circles, led us past roads we needed to turn on...I think it took us nearly an hour to go a few miles. I loathe driving around Boston anyway; that didn't endear the city to me in any way. 

[gardenmom5]

we were chatting with a friend, who'd spent time in deep backwoods Appalachia.  (yes, it's a foreign country).  one of the standard directions was "I see"... some directions they received were - you go two "I sees", and down the hill.

I see was - at the top of the hill, how far you could see was "I see".  so you'd go to that spot, and the next "I see" was where you would "go down the hill".  he had some crazy stories.  and be careful they don't think you're from the government...

[gardenmom5]

39 minutes ago, teachermom2834 said:

I moved to a small town a few years ago. Things are still called by what they were 30 years ago. So, there is a middle school located in what used to be the high school. It is often referred to as “Old Small Town High” instead of it’s current name which doesn’t have the name of the town in at all. Very confusing when someone sends you there.

I get directions all the time that say something like turn where the elementary school used to be or where the church burned down. 

There was a local Christmas event that was even listed in the paper as located at “The Old Post Office”. Took me a long time online to figure out where the event was. The old post office has been a different government building for many years. 

Sometimes it is funny but mostly it reminds me I’ll never belong here 😞

dh's family moved to a small town, where the only way someone could move in, was if someone moved out.  for the entire time they lived there - their house was known as the "Gotfriedson's house"... when they moved, it became "Dh's family's house".

[mumto2]

When we moved to England we printed maps from Google for every important place we had to go over the next couple of weeks, things like how to get to our flat from the airport, the bank from our flat etc......

So we get off the plane with two exhausted kids, collect our luggage which is now everything we own,  and get in the rental car.  We have several drive around the roundabout 10 times while I try to read the directions and make them fit where we are.....finally give up and just read signs as there are newly added roundabouts and after over an hour can see the building across a small lake but the road, something lane does not exist.  We know it’s our building as it’s new with 7 stories and is still the only building that tall in that area.   We drive between two roundabouts 15 or so minutes.  There are two roads into a huge estate (subdivision) that don’t appear to have anything to do with our house and are really narrow and some bike/walking trails (really nice trails)........finally we turn on one of the narrow roads with cars all over and find ourselves in a huge rabbit warren of turns......none of this is on my map btw.  Eventually we park in front of our building....real estate guy could not believe google had us on those BIKE paths.    The rest of the directions were fine after we got out on the main road or at least not bike paths with pretty names. 😂

Then we bought a gps which drove us in a circle around downtown Sheffield’s one way streets for an hour and loved dirt roads/paths...

[Skippy]

I think it is kinda like cooking. People who really know how to cook well can't tell you what you need to know. "You just use some of this and a little of that."

My husband has a great sense of direction and really knows his own way around the metropolitan area near us. So he will tell me something like, "At this point you will need to keep the downtown to your east." With my sense of direction, this doesn't help me at all. 

[Miss Tick]

In the early days of electronic navigation Google maps took us to the back of the mall where we were to meet the shuttle. There was a grassy area and a 10 wooden fence, but just over that we could see the buildings...

[Ellie]

A friend told me to turn where the police car is parked. o_0

My Garmin GPS has done some squirrely things. I took it with me on a trip to Virginia, and when in Colonial Williamsburg, I wanted to go to the Yankee Candle Store after visiting the historic district. I had a pretty good idea where it was, because I had been there before, and I had also checked it out on the map just to be sure, but I thought it would be a little more simple to just do the GPS.

Biggest.mistake.ever.

The historic district is...historic. There has been no construction there since possibly 1776. The College of William and Mary is part of the historic district. Of course. It's been there for over 300 years. One would think that the GPS wouldn't have any problems navigating through there, but one would be wrong. The GPS took me all through the W&M campus, behind buildings, into dead end parking lots. WTH? I finally turned the thing off and fiddled around in the approximate direction I knew the store to be and found it myself. Sheesh.

[alisoncooks]

My worst directions have been of the "your destination is on the right" variety...when the only thing to the right is forest or broken down shacks. So much for technology...

[HomeAgain]

59 minutes ago, MEmama said:

This is how it goes here, too. Some days I find it amusing for its provincialism, other times annoying for the same reason. 

By far the worst was relying on GPS to get us from Cambridge to Concord, MA (should be a fairly straight shot, except that no roads in Boston make sense). It had us driving in random circles, led us past roads we needed to turn on...I think it took us nearly an hour to go a few miles. I loathe driving around Boston anyway; that didn't endear the city to me in any way. 

Oh!  The one time I was in Boston after dark, I was driving out from the airport at about 10pm.  The GPS didn't want me to get on the highway but instead took me in circles down the sketchiest parts of the city possible.  I was down under the bridges and in areas that looked condemned....and of course everything was one way.  I eventually gave up and turned off the gps, found the highway on-ramp signs, and got the heck out of there!

[lavender's green]

Google Directions wanted us to go on a road that hadn't been built yet. We were trying to get to our local IKEA for the first time, and it took us on this weird convoluted back way through sketchy areas, and sure enough, there was IKEA. The back of IKEA. On the other side of a huge valley! Rather than staying on the highway for a couple more miles and getting off at IKEA Blvd, as we soon learned. There actually is a road there now. We took it last year on our way home when traffic on the highway was at a standstill.

 

[SanDiegoMom]

My boyfriend in college (now husband) was never good with remembering to get directions, so when I picked him up in Maryland to drive to Delaware for a beach weekend, he was so proud of himself for bringing a paper copy with the directions. You know what was on it? Four highway numbers, with no East, West North, or South. Just the numbers! Argh.  It took us forever and we had to keep guessing - does this road look right to you? What about this? 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, DawnM said:

"You are going to make a right where the McDonald's used to be.  I think it is a Burger King now, or maybe a bank, I can't remember, but if you get to the place where that big tree came down in the hurricane, you have gone too far.  They might have removed the tree by now, I am not sure, but you will need to turn around if you go past that.  Oh wait, you know what?  I think you have to turn left where the McDonald's used to be, let me think about this.  Oh, and before you get to the place that used to be the McDonald's, you will pass that big area......."

It went on from there.  This was a city/town I had never been too before.  I finally told her to give me the address and I would look it up.  This was before the days of the internet too!  I used a paper MAP.

But I am a "go North on Smith Rd for 2 miles, and then turn West on Jones Avenue for 3.4 miles" type of person.

You’ve been getting directions from my mom, I see. 

All of my worst directions (that were not GPS, which had a few doozies) were my mom or my sister, who do give directions like you said. My favorite one included, “....right where that place is, it used to be a bakery but it burned down a while back (like, 30 years ago)...I think it’s just a warehouse now, but it used to have that sign with a pig on it - remember? I’m sure you must remember! Aunt Mary went there all the time...  » No, I don’t remember, mom. I have no bloody idea what you’re talking about. 

[Laura Corin]

The first time I took the new bridge to Edinburgh, Google Maps was freaking out.  'Turn around, turn around!'  Calvin, who had my phone, could see that Google thought we were in the middle of a field.  

It took six years to build and it was a much-talked-about project.  Surely Google could have worked it out in that time!

Edited February 9, 2019 by Laura Corin

[Lori D.]

Not nearly as vague as some of the previous anecdotes, but here's mine, from just a few months ago:

Picking up something from the house I'd never been to of an acquaintance who is a lovely but scattered-thinking lady. She sent an email with directions with NO house number and NO street name: "You'll turn off of major street X onto neighborhood street Y. Halfway up the street on the left is the sign to the entrance to the ABC neighborhood; my house is on the right." 

I assumed since I was given no other street name, that "my house on the right" meant the house on the right opposite the sign/entrance to the named neighborhood. Twenty minutes of knocking at that house (no one home), the next house (also no one home), driving up and back again, and texting and phoning the lady (no answer!), texting a mutual friend for the house number (no response!), it finally occurred to me that in her scattered and incomplete way of giving directions, she *might* have meant turn in to that neighborhood (no street name given), and then her house would be the first house when you turn onto the first street at the right (again, no street name given, and no house number given). Indeed, that was it, as she opened the door immediately at first knock.

Note to self: don't just skim emails with directions when you get them, make sure there is at least a house number and the actual street name included! 😉

[LadyR]

Quote

Oh!  The one time I was in Boston after dark, I was driving out from the airport at about 10pm.  The GPS didn't want me to get on the highway but instead took me in circles down the sketchiest parts of the city possible.  I was down under the bridges and in areas that looked condemned....and of course everything was one way.  I eventually gave up and turned off the gps, found the highway on-ramp signs, and got the heck out of there!

 

This SAME thing happened to my husband leaving Logan airport! 

One day in Boston I stopped to ask a panhandler for directions.  He pointed to the left and said take this right.  I said you mean left?  He adamantly pointed to the left and said no, take this right!  He also asked me if I was a movie star, so I think he was a little under the influence. lol

[happi duck]

We moved to a new region of the states and needed directions frequently to start.  (This was before smart phones and inexpensive gps)

Everyone gave directions that included detailed portions that were unnecessary.  "Look for a white house with a tree in front.  Keep going.  At the next intersection there'll be a gas station and a grocery store.  Keep going." etc.

At first I was trying to remember or write down all the information but quickly learned to just listen for what I needed...the address and landmarks pertaining to turns.

[MEmama]

4 hours ago, HomeAgain said:

Oh!  The one time I was in Boston after dark, I was driving out from the airport at about 10pm.  The GPS didn't want me to get on the highway but instead took me in circles down the sketchiest parts of the city possible.  I was down under the bridges and in areas that looked condemned....and of course everything was one way.  I eventually gave up and turned off the gps, found the highway on-ramp signs, and got the heck out of there!

Ugh! Getting out of that airport to the highway is bad enough even if you know what you're doing! It makes.no.sense.

We take the bus now. Soooo much easier. :)

[Tap]

I think the most annoying directions are when someone gives you directions to somewhere you are not going. My mom is notorious for going some place herself and then telling me, "if you want to go to that restaurant that makes grilled cheese sandwiches like grandma made....Drive xzy city....then go past the white house, to the right of exit 2....".

I'm sitting there saying...."mom,I'm not going to xyz, I don't need directions how to get there"

Her "well you might want to go someday!"

Me: I won't remember in 3 years how you told me to get there, and honestly I would just use Google maps."

Her "just incase...you go past the white house, to the right of exit 2...."

OY!!!!

[Daria]

My bff gives directions like this “as you’re driving you’ll see this daycare center on the left that is called Kandace’s Kiddie Korner “ spelled with K’s which makes me wonder two things one is Did they write that down and not notice the initials and two even if you didn’t who wants a preschool teacher who can’t spell corner? Anyway other than the sign it’s very cute they have these paper plate flowers on the big window that they made with tissue paper and I was thinking we could make some of those at home with Mary, wouldn’t that be fun?  Anyway when you see the window just keep driving, you don’t need to turn there or anything.”

 

So I end end up stopping like every two blocks because I recognize some landmark and I think I need to do something but nope.

[Moonhawk]

"The same place as last time"

I'd never gone before. 😕 lol

 

[Annie G]

Any direction that includes things like ‘turn west’. I am directionally challenged. Tell me left or right only, please. 

I really hate when my gps tells me I’ve reached my destination but there is nothing there but a cornfield. I was looking for a high school that was at least ten years old!

I recently heard someone ask where the Starbucks is located in our town and the person told her it was where the Pizza Inn used to be. I’ve lived here 25 years and never knew a Pizza Inn had been there. How can that be helpful to someone?????

[Tap]

2 minutes ago, Moonhawk said:

"The same place as last time"

I'd never gone before. 😕 lol

 

Unrelated to spacial directions, but my company answers our work questions like this all the time.

Us employees via text/email to District manager: "We see that we starting to run xyz promotion again, will you clarify the rules for us. The rules were confusing last time and different people interpreted the answers differently. It really caused a lot of problems last time"

DM to us: "The rules are the same as last time."

Us to him: "Can you please forward us the rules sheet so we have a current copy.  We need to make sure we have a paper copy to show the customer if they ask. We don't have a current copy."

DM to us "Use the same sheet as last time."

Us to him "we don't have one, the old sheet had a promotion end date on it, so we tossed it.  If there is not a new one, please send us a copy of the one from last time. One particular problem was this...."

DM to us: "Just use your best judgement and take care of the customer The rules are the same."

UGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

[mumto2]

Another moving to England funny......kids get invited to a friend’s house and I actually know where the road is,  so I just ask for the house number.  So I take off for 165 X Road.......she didn’t tell me that she lived in 4 blocks of houses that were numbered as built.  Her house was between 235 and 450.  Absolutely no order and I was embarrassed to call.  We drove around looking at everyone’s car and eventually decided to knock on a door with a silver Ford Focus in the driveway......there were four driveway’s with that car.  Her address was not easily displayed.....we did find it right before we actually knocked. 

There are lots of older neighborhoods with addresses totally out of order......I actually like hearing the white door with roses or similar.  😂

[Scarlett]

Worst for me...... I asked an employee of a business if the building was on the north or south side of the road, he said, ‘it depends on which direction you are coming from. 

[klmama]

2 minutes ago, mumto2 said:

There are lots of older neighborhoods with addresses totally out of order......I actually like hearing the white door with roses or similar.  😂

How frustrating, and how odd! That must be very difficult for delivery people! 

[BarbecueMom]

I dispatched for two years in a rural area, that I didn't grow up in, that had just switched over to "real" 911-issued addresses instead of county road numbers.  Two long years of asking deputies, "What's your 20?" and getting a description of some place I'd never heard of, that didn't exist anymore, and was probably quite different than they remember (i.e. a barn instead of an old schoolhouse)... oh, and can I send backup?  *headdesk*

[lavender's green]

I thought of bad non-GPS one. DH and I were staying with my aunt and uncle, who live in a major city with lots of highways and business loops to navigate. We casually mentioned to each other that we should figure out our route home (not expecting help). Uncle launches into this really complicated "Go south on US X, not Business X, then hop onto I Whatever East, take that to the bridge and immediately get onto US Z West, immediately, it's easy to miss, then you're going to want I Whichever North, stay on that for two miles then take this weird little side road to...." It was way more complicated that the route we'd taken to their house. When we finally got our atlas out, we realized that he was was trying to keep us off the toll roads. Which is nice, but it was like $3 in tolls and he wanted us to go 45 minutes out of our way in terrible traffic on complicated roads.

[MEmama]

1 hour ago, Tap said:

I think the most annoying directions are when someone gives you directions to somewhere you are not going. My mom is notorious for going some place herself and then telling me, "if you want to go to that restaurant that makes grilled cheese sandwiches like grandma made....Drive xzy city....then go past the white house, to the right of exit 2....".

I'm sitting there saying...."mom,I'm not going to xyz, I don't need directions how to get there"

Her "well you might want to go someday!"

Me: I won't remember in 3 years how you told me to get there, and honestly I would just use Google maps."

Her "just incase...you go past the white house, to the right of exit 2...."

OY!!!!

My MIL does this! She lives in a totally different part of the country, in a city we don't know at all. But that doesn't stop her from telling us all the different roads she takes to visit *insert random person we don't know here*. Like, why would would we care? The directions are completely meaningless to us. 

My mom is the one who thinks I should remember/have ever been aware of roads in my hometown, that I moved away from nearly 30 years ago. No, mom, I don't know where that place is because I was a teenager when I lived in town and didn't go to that type of place, and also it didn't exist yet. You might remember I live on the other side of the country and visit once a decade or so? 

[Shoeless]

1 hour ago, Annie G said:

Any direction that includes things like ‘turn west’. I am directionally challenged. Tell me left or right only, please. 

 

 

I am also directionally challenged.  I can only figure out cardinal directions when the sun is out.  If someone gives me directions like "Go North for 3 miles, then head east" and it's night time? What the heck, should I navigate by stars? I'm not a Viking, this plan won't work. 

My sister lives in a major city that is mapped out on a grid system.  She extols the virtues of this system by saying "It's great! Once you know where you are on the grid and where the streets fall in relation to the grid, you can navigate anywhere!"  Well, yes, if you memorize the dang map, yes you can navigate anywhere!  If you don't know where the center point of the grid is, then how do you know which direction to head? Also, Madison Street turns into West Madison Street *as you head EAST into the city*, so you have to remember that West Madison is east, not west.  And East Madison?  It's like 1 block long, but West Madison?  It's 8 miles long.  Just why?!  None of this makes sense to me.  Just tell me to turn left at the 3rd stop sign past the Burger King and I'll get there. Don't tell me things like "It's 1/2 mile North of the 7000 block of West Madison, on the odd side of the street".  Exhausting.  

Edited February 9, 2019 by MissLemon

[Annie G]

17 minutes ago, MissLemon said:

 

I am also directionally challenged.  I can only figure out cardinal directions when the sun is out.  If someone gives me directions like "Go North for 3 miles, then head east" and it's night time? What the heck, should I navigate by stars? I'm not a Viking, this plan won't work. 

My sister lives in a major city that is mapped out on a grid system.  She extols the virtues of this system by saying "It's great! Once you know where you are on the grid and where the streets fall in relation to the grid, you can navigate anywhere!"  Well, yes, if you memorize the dang map, yes you can navigate anywhere!  If you don't know where the center point of the grid is, then how do you know which direction to head? Also, Madison Street turns into West Madison Street *as you head EAST into the city*, so you have to remember that West Madison is east, not west.  And East Madison?  It's like 1 block long, but West Madison?  It's 8 miles long.  Just why?!  None of this makes sense to me.  Just tell me to turn left at the 3rd stop sign past the Burger King and I'll get there. Don't tell me things like "It's 1/2 mile North of the 7000 block of West Madison, on the odd side of the street".  Exhausting.  

Our town has a west avenue that runs north/south and a south street that runs east/west.  When I moved here I thought I was being punked- go south on West then turn east on South. 

[mmasc]

My maps app on my iPhone have given me the worst directions I’ve ever had. Last fall, just a couple of months after moving to this new state, I was driving alone to a completely unknown area to watch my DS play a football game. I put the address in my trusty little phone and set off. It was about a 45 minute drive. I was about one minute to destination, yet it has me turning into a residential subdivision. Then, out of nowhere right in the middle of the road, in front of someone’s house, my phone tells me something like ‘you will need to park and walk to your destination.’ 🤔 ummm, ok, I’ll just park here at this person’s house and wander around until I find a football field. 😂 What the heck?!! I’ve never heard it say anything like that since. 

Edited February 9, 2019 by mmasc

[mmasc]

56 minutes ago, MissLemon said:

 

I am also directionally challenged.  I can only figure out cardinal directions when the sun is out.  If someone gives me directions like "Go North for 3 miles, then head east" and it's night time? What the heck, should I navigate by stars? I'm not a Viking, this plan won't work. 

My sister lives in a major city that is mapped out on a grid system.  She extols the virtues of this system by saying "It's great! Once you know where you are on the grid and where the streets fall in relation to the grid, you can navigate anywhere!"  Well, yes, if you memorize the dang map, yes you can navigate anywhere!  If you don't know where the center point of the grid is, then how do you know which direction to head? Also, Madison Street turns into West Madison Street *as you head EAST into the city*, so you have to remember that West Madison is east, not west.  And East Madison?  It's like 1 block long, but West Madison?  It's 8 miles long.  Just why?!  None of this makes sense to me.  Just tell me to turn left at the 3rd stop sign past the Burger King and I'll get there. Don't tell me things like "It's 1/2 mile North of the 7000 block of West Madison, on the odd side of the street".  Exhausting.  

Yes, so much yes to this!!!

[skywards]

6 hours ago, alisoncooks said:

My worst directions have been of the "your destination is on the right" variety...when the only thing to the right is forest or broken down shacks. So much for technology...

GPS does that a lot here. In fact, according to GPS, my neighbour 1/2 a mile down the road lives in the middle of my driveway.  

[Junie]

I was driving with my dad a few years ago.  He was giving me directions to a farmer's pond so that he could take the kids fishing.  This is in the town I grew up in, but I didn't know this farmer that he was talking about, so I just followed my dad's directions as he gave them from the passenger seat.

About 10 minutes into the drive (and probably 10 different turns through subdivisions that didn't exist when I lived there) we entered the highway.  Now, I could have easily gotten to this point by myself if he had just said go south on I-Whatever and get off at exit X.  Instead, he had to take me the scenic route (to avoid traffic?).

I drove home the way I knew. :eyeroll:

[Pippen]

6 hours ago, lavender's green said:

Google Directions wanted us to go on a road that hadn't been built yet. We were trying to get to our local IKEA for the first time, and it took us on this weird convoluted back way through sketchy areas, and sure enough, there was IKEA. The back of IKEA. On the other side of a huge valley! Rather than staying on the highway for a couple more miles and getting off at IKEA Blvd, as we soon learned. There actually is a road there now. We took it last year on our way home when traffic on the highway was at a standstill.

 

I make a trip through rural Iowa occassionally and everytime I reach this place pretty faraway from any big towns, my GPS suddenly decides it wants me to take a new route and starts instructing me to turn right, make a u-turn, etc. It's really quite insistent about it. The first time I actually did turn around, but seeing it was a backroad and there was flooding in the area, I stuck with my original route.

[Tanaqui]

As a pedestrian, I get the same exact bad direction whenever I ask somebody who drives for directions: "Oh, it's a mile away, it's too far to walk!"

When I point out that a mile is not, in fact, very far to walk they immediately say "I mean it's three miles! It's too far to walk!"

I've had this exact conversation multiple times with different people. It's never been more than half a mile, which is a ten minute walk, and in one case they could simply have said "You're already on the correct street, just head thataway for a while".

[school17777]

On 2/9/2019 at 9:55 AM, Bambam said:

Turn left by the old Hobby Lobby. (Which, btw, had been a Kroger for at least 5 years, so why not refer to it as Kroger?)

 

Haha!  Everyone refers to the place that is now a church as, you mean the old Kmart, which has been gone for almost 20 years and became a church shortly after.

[Stacia]

My dad had given me directions for driving from Atlanta to Charleston, SC. (Pre-cellphone & GPS days.) Normally, I'm good at directions & like looking at maps, but this time I went with what he told me & didn't check ahead of time. It was pretty obviously wrong in the beginning as he had me heading west out of Atlanta, so I knew to do the opposite there. (That should have made me suspicious.) All was ok until he somehow routed me through Orangeburg, SC, on various state routes. I got very lost & ended up in the middle of countryside. There was really nowhere to stop and ask directions. After meandering around for awhile on my own, I eventually ended up in Jedburg & managed to get back out to the interstate from there.

My unplanned "detour" had slowed me down quite a bit & I lost a lot of time. It mattered because on my way into Charleston, I was supposed to stop at the Charleston airport & pick up my cousin who was flying in from NYC. I figured by the time I got to the airport, she would have been waiting on me about two hours & would wonder what the heck happened. Turned out ok because, for her flight information, she had given me the time of her plane's departure, not the time of arrival. (Who does that???) So, it worked out perfectly in the end.

I still laugh anytime I see the highway sign for Jedburg.

[Home'scool]

Many moons ago, when I worked for a big corporation and traveled a lot, I was scheduled to go down to North Carolina. I always called the hotel to get directions from the airport. This time I got a woman who told me to exit the airport and look for signs that said "Booly Gran" highway. I asked her twice what it was called. Each time she said "Booly Gran" highway. I was going to ask her to spell it but she was becoming exasperated by me so I didn't.

When I got to the airport I started driving and kept a lookout for this weirdly named highway. Then I saw a sign for the "Billy Graham" highway. I took my chances that was it and thank goodness it was, otherwise I'd still be searching for Booly Gran!

Another time (this really isn't a story about getting directions so much as getting lost) when I was a teenager I was driving with my stepfather into the city. My mother was following us in her car with my brother and sister. My mother was notoriously clueless about driving anywhere, so driving into the city was a big deal for her.

So we are on the highway and all of a sudden my stepfather says "Watch this!" and speeds up, loses my mother, and quickly takes an exit off the highway. He then went down and around a bunch of side streets he knew and got back on the highway coming up behind my mother. I knew it was my mother because her hazards were on and was going about 35 mph in the right lane. We could see lots of yelling and hand gesturing and general freaking out in the car, which my stepfather found hilarious (ok, I did too haha).

When we pulled along side my mother she rolled down her window and started cussing and flipping my stepfather off. We still laugh at that today. She never did see the humor in it all!