Guest Blogger Lynn: Always Bring Backup!

My sister lives in a rural community on the west side of Michigan. Occasionally she takes a trip to the big city. She learned a very important lesson during her most recent adventure:

"Thought I would share what happened to me last weekend on my return from Chicago and my Garmin woes.

I was in Chicago with my sister-in-law for her high school reunion and we had a great time. It truly is a fabulous city, but extremely busy with traffic and we were armed with the Garmin (we call ours Lucy). As we were returning on Sunday to Michigan, Lucy wasn't cooperating. She showed us that we were in Lake Michigan, fields, rivers and she couldn't even find the major 8 lane highway I-94 that we were on. She kept on telling us to turn left in 100 ft. (that would have been into the guard rail). All of a sudden we saw a very bad accident that shut down the highway headed the other direction and traffic was literally backed-up for miles. Our turns and toll roads were directly ahead and we were not sure where to go--and Lucy now thinks we are in Wisconsin....wait Indiana...oh no, not Ohio! Armed with only Lucy and a Michigan map we followed the signs to Detroit (at least we new that was in Michigan anyway). About 50 miles later Lucy decided that we had had enough and recalculated; ahhh she found the highway again.

After I got home with sweaty palms I checked and learned that the Satellite had jammed because all the other travelers with GPS's were looking for detours due to the accident.

I will never travel again without additional directions such as Mapquest or the like. One of those big Atlas's would have been a godsend.

Thought I would share and have safe travels.

Love,
Lynn T."

When you rely on the "cloud" for all your information, you'd better have some form of backup for when the "cloud" becomes a storm!