Being in Duffield, VA this past Labor Day Weekend made us all remember the (now) humorous GPS adventure that Uncle R & I experienced trying to use our iPhone maps to get Aunt Callie to her favorite lunch spot - The Hob Nob Drive-In.I can't remember which of the Pamela's Girls I sent this to - back when it happened - so thought I'd include it here along with some new photos...
From: Auntie J
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2009 5:15 PM
Subject: Re: hi
We had such a good time with Aunt Callie!
I think that she was feeling pretty good and we all talked non-stop and ate and also took a nice drive on Saturday afternoon. It was a beautiful day and so we drove to Big Stone Gap, Appalachia and a little town called Norton (I think it was…).
Before we went on our drive we thought we’d go to the Hob Nob and eat lunch. We thought we remembered where it was, but Uncle R googled it on his iPhone and it gave us a route to take. It hit us as odd, because we thought that the Hob Nob was off to the right on the 4-lane highway heading to Kingsport and that it was located somewhere before you get to Gate City. Well, the route that Uncle R was shown said for him to turn off to the left - and when we got to the turn indicated we were pretty surprised because it was a little gravel road.
Interesting, we thought. It must be a handy-dandy little shortcut that will dump us out on the right road. Maybe we were remembering some other place off to the right. Good thing we have an SUV because this road wound and curved in steep slopes and hairpin turns that dropped off to oblivion on one side of the car and rocky moss-covered boulders on the other. Aunt Callie kept remarking; “I’ve never been out HERE before! It’s amazing what’s right out in your own backyard!” while Uncle R and I tittered nervously.
We got to a point where my iPhone’s GPS said; “I don’t know – don’t ask me!” and we passed a sign that said; “If you think the county is going to come out and make sure this road hasn’t washed away – think again!”
Then we were at a dead end where a creepy dueling banjos kinda house was perched on a hill above us with a front porch piled with various junk heaps that extended down the front steps, across the yard and ended with a couple of rusting cars that made turning around an impossible looking feat. Uncle R almost tried turning around in one spot and I yelped that it looked like some other cars had gotten stuck there and had been forced into getting a tow-out. So Uncle R went to the very end of the road where the junk cars were and he did a slick three-point-turn as only he can do, while a couple of hound dogs licked their chops and a cat ran down from the house like we were a rolling can of Fancy Feast… which,…I guess we were. It was seriously bizarre. I wish now that I had taken a photo of this place, but at the time I was locked in a frozen stare thinking that I’d better start praying.
We could see what was probably the connecting road, but it was across a rock-strewn river and stand of trees. The GPS mapping dude must have been mistaken for a revenuer and never turned back up to notify anyone that there was not a connection to this nifty little shortcut.
So we backtracked and made our way back to where we THOUGHT the Hob Nob was, which was INDEED where it was. As we munched on our hamburgers, we asked Aunt Callie what she thought about that drive and she smiled, sipped her decaf and shook her head in disbelief; “That was SOMETHING ELSE!” she said. I giggled till I cried.
Her short term memory is a bit faulty, but for 95 she’s totally amazing and sweet and interested in everyone and everything around her. She’s an absolute pleasure and hopes to maybe see us again soon. We told her that YooDee would love to come back with us next time maybe and would have come this time except for a church retreat. We told her maybe Nephew J and his wife, Niece J, could come too.
Duffield was its beautiful self, but we also got some interesting glimpses of Big Stone Gap and Appalachia that would we like to go back and see. What cool places they were.
We miss you guys! Love you!!!
Auntie J
On January 26, 2009, at 9:27 PM, ednjudy@comcast.net wrote:
Dear Uncle R, Auntie J and Sister B,
I enjoyed your description of your visit immensely!
About your little side trip: You may be right about the fate of the GPS dude. On the other hand, did anyone else detect something kinda familiar here? Now I don't know exactly what sort of things people do in heaven: I don't know if Dad plays a golden harp or if he prefers the baritone, or if he has joined the heavenly chorus, but I would not be surprised to learn that he enjoys tinkering with GPS gadgets, maybe enjoys it A LOT. I can see hear Dad saying, this road has got to be a shortcut to somewhere, and if you don't go down it today, you may never again have the opportunity to see the sights there today. And it is sure to be an adventure!
Love, Judy
From: Uncle R
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2009 11:02 PM
Subject: Re: hi
Dear everyone,
We did, indeed, have a marvelous time with Aunt Callie... and our little drive was, um, even more of an adventure than Auntie J quite makes it out to be. There were indeed hairpin turns on this dirt and gravel road so narrow that it was a close choice between scraping a gaping hole in the one side of our SUV against the jutting rocks, versus the earth giving way under our back wheels, precipitating a slide and tumble down untold height of mountain on the other hand. There were several places our wheels spun and kicked gravel just to climb a steep rise, and going downhill around sharp blind curves was a bit more like 4-wheel skiing than driving (with the added incentive that driving off the side of the mountain would, I suppose, have allowed us to ask Papa what he meant by tinkering with the GPS face to face!)
And as for the place where the road ended... the sign notifying us that “State maintenance of this road ends here” (to which I say, "What? You actually claim to have maintained this goat path of a road?") and the real dirt road began leading to the mud pit and the littered “yard” of the frightening cabin... I can only say this-- the movie “Jaws” did something which alerted the public conscience of the dangers of swimming in the ocean in a way that still gives ocean swimmers the heebe-jeebies... what “Jaws” did for the oceans, the movie, “Deliverance” did for anyone potentially stranded or mud-stuck in the backwoods without benefit of a gun, hatchet or kevlar underwear. Let’s just say that when the wheels started spinning in the mud on our quick 3-point turnaround (being real-careful NOT to run over one of the dogs that seemed to have never SEEN an actual car before, let alone have caught one and have it surrounded...) well, I’ll just say this-- I could could not imagine we had more than a moment’s time before someone emerged from that cabin with firearms cocked, aimed, locked and loaded. They say of the opera, “It’s not over till the fat lady sings”-- in the mud of that holler, I could hear the dueling banjos playing.
All of this became amusing when we sat in our relative comfort back at the Hob Nob eating burgers and fries and all of us got the giggles. Cousin Do later wondered if perhaps the mapping software had been trying to direct us to “High Nob”. I don’t know where that is, but it sounds like a desolate, lonely place to die. But sitting there eating, our GPS had steered us so wrong, I decided to give it another chance-- Now you can type in a phrase (like, say, “Mexican Restaurants”) into the iPhone and it will drop 3 or 4 pins onto the map around you showing your current location and how to get to each one... (complete with phone numbers, ratings, menus, sometimes even a photo of the building). So, sitting there in the Hob Nob, I typed in “Moonshine” and “Certain Death” and it dropped in pins all around us. We laughed until we cried! And went to Big Stone Gap on the main highway instead.
Uncle R
From: Auntie J
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2009 5:15 PM
Subject: Re: hi
We had such a good time with Aunt Callie!
I think that she was feeling pretty good and we all talked non-stop and ate and also took a nice drive on Saturday afternoon. It was a beautiful day and so we drove to Big Stone Gap, Appalachia and a little town called Norton (I think it was…).
Before we went on our drive we thought we’d go to the Hob Nob and eat lunch. We thought we remembered where it was, but Uncle R googled it on his iPhone and it gave us a route to take. It hit us as odd, because we thought that the Hob Nob was off to the right on the 4-lane highway heading to Kingsport and that it was located somewhere before you get to Gate City. Well, the route that Uncle R was shown said for him to turn off to the left - and when we got to the turn indicated we were pretty surprised because it was a little gravel road.
Interesting, we thought. It must be a handy-dandy little shortcut that will dump us out on the right road. Maybe we were remembering some other place off to the right. Good thing we have an SUV because this road wound and curved in steep slopes and hairpin turns that dropped off to oblivion on one side of the car and rocky moss-covered boulders on the other. Aunt Callie kept remarking; “I’ve never been out HERE before! It’s amazing what’s right out in your own backyard!” while Uncle R and I tittered nervously.
We got to a point where my iPhone’s GPS said; “I don’t know – don’t ask me!” and we passed a sign that said; “If you think the county is going to come out and make sure this road hasn’t washed away – think again!”
Then we were at a dead end where a creepy dueling banjos kinda house was perched on a hill above us with a front porch piled with various junk heaps that extended down the front steps, across the yard and ended with a couple of rusting cars that made turning around an impossible looking feat. Uncle R almost tried turning around in one spot and I yelped that it looked like some other cars had gotten stuck there and had been forced into getting a tow-out. So Uncle R went to the very end of the road where the junk cars were and he did a slick three-point-turn as only he can do, while a couple of hound dogs licked their chops and a cat ran down from the house like we were a rolling can of Fancy Feast… which,…I guess we were. It was seriously bizarre. I wish now that I had taken a photo of this place, but at the time I was locked in a frozen stare thinking that I’d better start praying.
We could see what was probably the connecting road, but it was across a rock-strewn river and stand of trees. The GPS mapping dude must have been mistaken for a revenuer and never turned back up to notify anyone that there was not a connection to this nifty little shortcut.
So we backtracked and made our way back to where we THOUGHT the Hob Nob was, which was INDEED where it was. As we munched on our hamburgers, we asked Aunt Callie what she thought about that drive and she smiled, sipped her decaf and shook her head in disbelief; “That was SOMETHING ELSE!” she said. I giggled till I cried.
Her short term memory is a bit faulty, but for 95 she’s totally amazing and sweet and interested in everyone and everything around her. She’s an absolute pleasure and hopes to maybe see us again soon. We told her that YooDee would love to come back with us next time maybe and would have come this time except for a church retreat. We told her maybe Nephew J and his wife, Niece J, could come too.
Duffield was its beautiful self, but we also got some interesting glimpses of Big Stone Gap and Appalachia that would we like to go back and see. What cool places they were.
We miss you guys! Love you!!!
Auntie J
On January 26, 2009, at 9:27 PM, ednjudy@comcast.net wrote:
Dear Uncle R, Auntie J and Sister B,
I enjoyed your description of your visit immensely!
About your little side trip: You may be right about the fate of the GPS dude. On the other hand, did anyone else detect something kinda familiar here? Now I don't know exactly what sort of things people do in heaven: I don't know if Dad plays a golden harp or if he prefers the baritone, or if he has joined the heavenly chorus, but I would not be surprised to learn that he enjoys tinkering with GPS gadgets, maybe enjoys it A LOT. I can see hear Dad saying, this road has got to be a shortcut to somewhere, and if you don't go down it today, you may never again have the opportunity to see the sights there today. And it is sure to be an adventure!
Love, Judy
From: Uncle R
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2009 11:02 PM
Subject: Re: hi
Dear everyone,
We did, indeed, have a marvelous time with Aunt Callie... and our little drive was, um, even more of an adventure than Auntie J quite makes it out to be. There were indeed hairpin turns on this dirt and gravel road so narrow that it was a close choice between scraping a gaping hole in the one side of our SUV against the jutting rocks, versus the earth giving way under our back wheels, precipitating a slide and tumble down untold height of mountain on the other hand. There were several places our wheels spun and kicked gravel just to climb a steep rise, and going downhill around sharp blind curves was a bit more like 4-wheel skiing than driving (with the added incentive that driving off the side of the mountain would, I suppose, have allowed us to ask Papa what he meant by tinkering with the GPS face to face!)
And as for the place where the road ended... the sign notifying us that “State maintenance of this road ends here” (to which I say, "What? You actually claim to have maintained this goat path of a road?") and the real dirt road began leading to the mud pit and the littered “yard” of the frightening cabin... I can only say this-- the movie “Jaws” did something which alerted the public conscience of the dangers of swimming in the ocean in a way that still gives ocean swimmers the heebe-jeebies... what “Jaws” did for the oceans, the movie, “Deliverance” did for anyone potentially stranded or mud-stuck in the backwoods without benefit of a gun, hatchet or kevlar underwear. Let’s just say that when the wheels started spinning in the mud on our quick 3-point turnaround (being real-careful NOT to run over one of the dogs that seemed to have never SEEN an actual car before, let alone have caught one and have it surrounded...) well, I’ll just say this-- I could could not imagine we had more than a moment’s time before someone emerged from that cabin with firearms cocked, aimed, locked and loaded. They say of the opera, “It’s not over till the fat lady sings”-- in the mud of that holler, I could hear the dueling banjos playing.
All of this became amusing when we sat in our relative comfort back at the Hob Nob eating burgers and fries and all of us got the giggles. Cousin Do later wondered if perhaps the mapping software had been trying to direct us to “High Nob”. I don’t know where that is, but it sounds like a desolate, lonely place to die. But sitting there eating, our GPS had steered us so wrong, I decided to give it another chance-- Now you can type in a phrase (like, say, “Mexican Restaurants”) into the iPhone and it will drop 3 or 4 pins onto the map around you showing your current location and how to get to each one... (complete with phone numbers, ratings, menus, sometimes even a photo of the building). So, sitting there in the Hob Nob, I typed in “Moonshine” and “Certain Death” and it dropped in pins all around us. We laughed until we cried! And went to Big Stone Gap on the main highway instead.
Uncle R
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