The convenience of having every phone number, every ticket, our full itinerary and calendar, all our needed information with us all the time. To say nothing of having it in case of emergency, to call for roadside assistance, or what have you. I can't imagine choosing not to have access to all those services while travelling.

I certainly hear you, albaby. And if our trip was to Japan, we’d be bringing our phones after taking a few precautions.

But we’re headed for Canada- Ontario, not Quebec, and we are bot generally familiar with the two areas where we will be spending the majority of our time. And with AAA provided trip maps, we should have little problem, though the drive from Niagara on the Lake to Stratford bypasses Toronto and utilizes a lot of secondary roads. That’s why God invented maps and put compasses on rear view mirrors.

I confess that I’ve grown tired of relying so heavily on technology (I say this while tapping on my iPhone). I believe that our ability to navigate our own way in the world, whether that navigation is through stacks in a library or in the countryside when faced with forks in the road...... begins to atrophy as we rely on technology to simply give us the answers without struggle or active decision making.

Every now and then, when we find ourselves a couple of hundred miles from home, or a couple hundred miles from our next major destination, we’ll get off the major highway and simply navigate by compass heading. “OK, home is 175 miles east ad about 50 miles south of here”- so off we go, heading generally east with a few jogs south... until we hit a familiar road near home and coast the last few miles on auto pilot.

Doing it that way certainly adds a few more miles and a bit more driving time, but it keeps my brain active by actually navigating the terrain.

And of course there are the places and people we never would have discovered otherwise.

It’s a forgotten and active way of facing the world, a way that we were all intimately acquainted with fifty years ago, but have generally allow to slip away. At least for me, I need to keep that skillset active- whether by finding my way through an unfamiliar countryside, or through an unfamiliar problem..... by turning off my gps, or actively searching for answers by talking with people or using a library card catalogue (automated now) rather than typing in the question to prompt AI to spit out an answer.

God knows I use gps. And God knows I get answers from AI.

But it’s good to revert to the old style ways of navigating the world, if only to be reassured that I still can do it.