Siri Lives up to Her Name

No, not the one that begins with S. The one we routinely call her and her colleague from Samsung that resides inside my old S-4 when they take us places we don't want to visit....like Middle-of-Nowhere-Istan.

This past week we went places we had never been before...voluntarily for the most part but sometimes not so much. We had actual paper maps, but on teeny tiny back roads in the middle of nowhere they are essentially useless. Most of the roads aren't even there.

Thus we used the navigation tools on our phones.

My phone is outdated,  slow, and full of errors, so we eventually used Becky's modest version of the iPhone.

Once we persuaded it to use the route we wanted rather than the one through downtown Washington DC, it worked pretty well.

Until yesterday.

We wanted a route diagonally north from Appomattox to Route 81. Siri found one, or so she told us. In reality I don't think one exists.

Our first clue that something might be wrong was when she turned us off Route 64 and we had to go under that thing in the upper photo.

Things got worse from there. 

When you find yourself looking for Sheep Creek Rd. you tend to get a wee bit nervous.

When you see the sign above you get a little nervouser.

When the road turns from a skinny, twisty, upwardly mobile, paved two-lane to a one-lane rock chip horror that tangles and untangles its way up a mountain you think about turning around. We didn't think about it anywhere near soon enough. 

When we finally gave up we were many miles up in wild mountains, where it was incredibly beautiful, but very, very far from any place we needed to be and by the time we got back where we started we were nearly an hour and a half behind.

 I Googled Sheep Creek Road and looked at the way Siri wanted to take us north I am well beyond wildly grateful we gave up when we did. OMG 

We eventually found our own way to I 81. We eventually found our way home. It was a great trip....but home is home....

*If you wish to trace the route where Siri was trying to take us, follow Sheep Creek to Murrells Gap and see if you can find a way to I 81 North.

from Northview Diary http://bit.ly/2Z8WzuP