The Only Thing Worse Than Not Having a GPS...

... is having a GPS. As we so aptly discovered in this weeks diversions.

On Thursday we were able to take to a car; my mom suggested a castle only about 15 minutes away. For this trip, we had the GPS AND the address via GoogleMaps.

I think everyone knows that sinking feeling when your GPS doesn't recognize or accept the address you are telling it to find. You insist your destination exists; pictures and testimonials support you! And yet your GPS mocks you with all its technology-ness- blaring in your face that "No matches were found." Oh how I hate that.

We decided to try and find the castle anyway. We knew the general area and we did have an address after all. Down the autobahn we went, searching for an exit that supposedly didn't exist. Part of the address included "Burg Lichtenberg" and soon we found a large brown sign announcing we were in the Burg Lichtenberg area- which was kind of a help but still no castle. After driving far past where we even thought we should be, we turned around and just took an exit and began driving again.

Finally, exasperated, we pulled into a small town and just stopped the car. Lo and Behold! They provided a map. We located the castle and learned our GPS didn't accept the address because the town 'Thallichtenberg" had only one 'l' on Google. A quick adjustment, and we were soon at the 13th century castle high up on the hill enjoying the brief break in the cloudy sky.

This section of the castle has been converted into a restaurant which we plan to visit on a sunnier day.

Gorgeous view!

Our next GPS adventure happened yesterday when we left to go to the Frankfurt LDS Temple for our ward temple day. The session started at 0900, and even though we're only about an hour and a half away, we were meeting for carpool at 0615- blech! It ended up just being us and one other ward member who agreed to drive. He asked us if we had a GPS, which we didn't, but we told him we were close to home and could go get it.

"Nah, I've got my phone GPS, we should be good. Let's go."

Famous last words...

The phone GPS did indeed get us to the temple, nearly two hours later. We missed multiple exits and worried we may miss everything. Fortunately, we were able to do some maneuvering and get there in time. Phew!

Fast forward, we left the temple around 1145 (after we paid for clothing rental, 12 Euro, ouch!). The phone only had 10% battery left and we needed gas. We managed to get directions to the gas station, and even write the basics down to get home from there before it died. And then, we were on our own.

Getting to the main freeway wasn't too bad, it was the four after that that eluded us. When Matt, our driver, expressed concern that we hadn't seen our exit yet, we flipped to a small map he luckily had in the car. We found a city we'd just seen a sign for and realized we were about an hour north of where we should have been. Oops.

Ray did some master navigating and suggested we take a diagonal route that would potentially save us some time. It probably did, but we'll never know because we still managed to miss exits and end up on wrong freeways. Finally we got to Frankfurt-am-Mainz and saw signs for cities remotely close to home. I was so happy to recognize a city! Until I converted the kilometers to miles and realized we were still about an hour from that city... which was still about half an hour from home. Ouch.

Needless to say, there was much rejoicing in our small party when we finally were on a road we all recognized, and the signs indicated we were indeed going the correct direction. Nearly three and a half hours later, we arrived back at home.

 Next time, no matter what, we'll just go back for the GPS.

We made it. Frankfurt Temple.

Frankfurt LDS Temple