Nash: GPS is fine, but maps give me more than just directions

Vacation travel is usually about the destination, but getting there should be fun, too.

It often isn't, because the airlines cram us into uncomfortable flying buses and cross-country drives are usually along sterile interstates that get us to our destination quickly, but bypass much of what is interesting along the way. I'm fortunate though, because I discovered the magic of maps at an early age.

Technology has almost totally superseded maps, but it hasn't made them obsolete, and I don't think it ever will. In my car, I have a GPS device that will, literally, tell me where to go. I have to admit it's amazing. Its sense of direction may have saved my wife and me after a late night flight into Miami and a search for our motel through neighborhoods better left unvisited. But I usually keep the sound turned off and just refer to the map displayed on the screen.

At home or in the office, I can refer to Google maps. I find these fascinating. I love the satellite imagery that shows not only landmarks and natural features, but all the stuff stored in my neighbor's backyard. Even with all this technology, I find there is something missing in electronic maps. If I had to define it, I might call it perspective.

I love spreading out a paper map and then exploring it edge to edge. To be sure, I find my destination and plan my route, but I can't resist the temptation to look for what I might be missing along the way. I look for ghost towns, historical markers, old mines, small museums, little parks, view points and all sorts of other things that the rest of my family would rather drive past.

Before a trip to a new destination, I'll spend hours poring over a map finding points of interest and listing things I'd like to see. The rest of my family is more relaxed and adopts a "let's explore when we get there" attitude. I don't really object to that, but by reading the map beforehand, I feel like I get a head start on the trip.

One of the things I really enjoy is finding things on a map that no longer exist. The best examples of this are towns that have disappeared, and now survive in name only. Ventura County has plenty of these — Buckhorn, Bardsdale, Sulphur Springs and Springville to name just a few.

Elsewhere, you can actually watch towns disappearing from the map. Ghost towns are some of my favorites. These towns are usually just the remaining shells of what were once vigorous communities. My wife and I have visited dozens of these towns and, wandering through them, you can't help but try to imagine what they looked like when they were thriving.

Near our family ranch in Wyoming is another town that is slowly disappearing. But it won't be a ghost town, soon it will just be high desert prairie land. Moneta is a tiny community next to the railroad tracks and at the crossroads of two small roads in central Wyoming. At its height, it consisted of about four buildings. The largest of them, its only commercial structure, burned to the ground years ago and the rest are slowly rotting away. Some day the buildings will disappear entirely, but because it sits at a crossroads, Moneta will always be found on the map.

As we drive on our summer trips, I'll have a GPS on the dashboard giving me directions, but I'll also have a stack of paper maps, showing me where I am.