Fun with Maps

So this is not our first time to make the drive from Austin, TX to Boston, MA/Conway, NH. Probably more like our... fifth time now. Enough times at any rate that we're familiar enough with the roads to not need the maps much anymore other than for finding alternate routes or verifying the road we'll be on next. Here's the route we typically follow:

We both have iPhones and have come accustomed to navigating via the maps on the phone. As such, we neglected to pack a map book this time, whereas we normally would grab our books from HOG or KOA, or the ReallyBigBookofStateMaps we have. As great as the phone is, we both wished we had hard copies of maps - even if you can't zoom in for more detail and local town street names.

If it had been just another trip, it wouldn't have been a big deal. But here's why it was:
 
You see, we were fervently hoping for rain in the Austin area. All those folks praying and praying for rain in central Texas sure created a lot - it just bypassed us and dumped on the states around the Mississippi and Ohio rivers instead. I guess we need to be a little more specific when we pray for rain. Lots of good people in the midwest are in a rough way now, unfortunately.

Anyhow, as a result of all this record rainfall in the area, our normal route through Arkansas into Tennessee was thwarted. Somewhere between Little Rock and Memphis, there was flooding on I-40. We planned ahead accordingly, and determined we'd take a short detour up towards St. Louis, MO up 67. We went through St. Louis on our drive back once and knew it wasn't a terribly bad route:

Driving across Arkansas, we got lots of confirmation that I-40 was still closed to us. But our other route remained open... until about an hour before we got to Little Rock. There was flooding on 67 a bit south of the Missouri/Arkansas border. Out came the iPhones to determine where to go. And lots of frustration due to the small size/lots of scrolling, having to wait for new sections of the map to load, and the occasional lack of 3G or Edge coverage. Add to that, county names and borders aren't so easy to find or aren't present at all, and many notes indicating where roads were closed at were by which county it was in. Ah, the joys of technology. Both of us were wishing for a paper map - and we stopped at a rest area to get one, but the center was closed.

Eventually we determined there weren't many options. Back to Dallas and north from there. South to Shreveport, where traffic had been getting directed the whole way to Little Rock. Or zig zag the other way across Arkansas almost to Oklahoma.

If we went back to Dallas, we probably would have just given up and gone back to Austin and tried again some other time. Not something we particularly wanted to do since we'd done so much planning already.

Shreveport didn't seem like an overly smart option, considering we'd have to cross the Mississippi River further south - which is where the water was headed. Encountering more flooded roads was rather likely in that direction.

So that left us heading towards the northwest corner of Arkansas. Out I-? towards Fort Smith, then through the Ozarks on I-? into Missouri and then east to St. Louis.

The Ozarks are really quite pretty. The people that settled there after the French were largely German, English, Irish, and Scottish. So between the landscape and the architecture, it almost felt like we were already in New England. We slept for a few hours on the way, and actually got to see some of the mountains in the daylight, starting just about sunrise.

And the deep valleys were covered in mist, too...

Ultimately, the detour for the detour added an entire extra day of driving to our trip. Here's the full route:

Next trip, I'm certainly making sure to pack one of my books of maps. That will guarantee it won't be necessary to utilize. Technology is great until it fails you, and sometimes the old fashioned way of doing things is just easier.