Navigating a new town

It's a good thing we have a GPS, otherwise I would be driving in circles, vainly trying to find a grocery store or our house.

For the past 22 years we lived in small towns in Vermont with less than 5,000 people. The first 13 years we lived in Arlington, with no stoplights. We didn't have interstate highways in our area of Vermont, and 4-lane highways are few and far between.

Now we live in Prescott, AZ, home to about 40,000 people. There are 4-lane roads everywhere, even through the center of town; lots of stoplights, roads that change names at an intersection, and streets in our subdivision that curve and wind around in seemingly random directions. Over the past 5 days I've learned to get from our house to the health club, hospital, and major shopping district just outside town. I've started trying to second-guess the GPS, picturing where I want to go and which turns I need to make without relying on the computer, but I'm not yet ready to travel without the  GPS safety net.

Today I thought I knew that Gail Gardner Way would take me from one major highway to another. I was right - if only I had turned the other direction. When I turned left instead of right, I ended up on the west side of downtown. At least I recognized that Gurley Street was the main street through town, and then I relied on the GPS to take me back to my original destination.

What did people do in the days before GPS? I don't have a smart phone, and the only map I've found is one of those tourist maps that aren't drawn to scale and leave out whole sections of the town - usually the places I want to go.

I remember circling Bennington for 30 minutes trying to find a grocery store when we first moved to Vermont. Bennington has a population of around 15,000, but there were stoplights and cross-streets and unfamiliar roads. I finally found the grocery store, and then managed to find my way home - all without a map or a GPS. About 3 years later I decided to attempt finding a shopping mall in Albany, NY, with our 2 boys in the back seat of the minivan. They kept asking if we were lost, and I told them I  knew where we were - sort of - so we weren't lost, just misdirected.We eventually found the mall, but I didn't drive back to Albany in search of a mall for over 10 years. It was easier, and less stressful, to simply drive straight up to Rutland and not have to deal with interstate highways with lots of traffic.

One of the major reasons for this cross-country move was to shake up our lives, face new challenges, and be a bit uncomfortable in our surroundings. Driving around town certainly meets all of these goals, and as I set out each day I take a deep breath, plug in the GPS, and remind myself that I'm not getting lost, I'm becoming familiar with my new hometown.