{"id":6107,"date":"2023-07-30T10:32:10","date_gmt":"2023-07-30T16:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/?p=6107"},"modified":"2023-07-30T10:40:51","modified_gmt":"2023-07-30T16:40:51","slug":"what-google-said","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/2023\/07\/30\/what-google-said\/","title":{"rendered":"What Google Said"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here is a snippet from the third day of my drive from Michigan to Austin. <\/em><\/i><\/p>\n

—<\/i><\/p>\n

Much of Wednesday morning was spent driving thru the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri. I was focused on taking scenic backroads, and today I got it.<\/p>\n

US-160<\/a> from Poplar Bluff to Alton starts out innocently enough: a generously well paved two-lane road running west, connecting two scenic routes with an east-west path running thru the national forest. <\/p>\n

Even though the atlas (yes, an old-school paper atlas) doesn’t explicitly mark it as scenic, I figured its route thru the national forest would be a joy. In the beginning, US-160 was a generously wide and nicely paved two-lane road. But with Poplar Bluff receding into the distance, as the road became narrow and the trees leaned over to blot out the sky, the road became a punctuated sequence of sharp turns left and then right that were posted at 35, 40 and 45mph. “You would have been carsick,” I later reported to Trudy. <\/p>\n

Still, in spite of the lack of a scenic designation, in my opinion that stretch of US-160 qualifies. Perhaps it is because the forest is so close at hand. Perhaps it is the trailers and homesteads along the road. Or perhaps it is the individual trees — tall Oaks with glossy, dark green leaves that throw down generous shade.<\/p>\n

Slow down. Turn left. Slow down. Turn right. So it went all the way to Alton, which I reached at 11:21, signaling Trudy upon my arrival. An hour later after crossing into Arkansas, I pulled off the road into the Salem City Park for lunch. There was shade. There were picnic tables. At the bottom of a hill there was a lake. And there were clean restrooms.<\/p>\n

\"a<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

“Yay!” Trudy celebrated when I told her I was stopping and then added, “Google says four hours<\/strong><\/em> to go.”<\/p>\n

But here’s the thing of it. Google doesn’t understand this kind of trip. Google assumes you want to go fast. Or Google assumes you want the shortest distance. I wanted neither and so didn’t consult the Google. So despite the algorithm’s estimate, I arrived six hours<\/strong><\/em> later at the Corps of Engineers Aux Arc Park on the shores of the Arkansas River near Ozark, Arkansas<\/p>\n

\"campsite<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

where I backed the trailer into site #2 in the shade of a Sweetgum Tree.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is a snippet from the third day of my drive from Michigan to Austin.  — Much of Wednesday morning was spent driving thru the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri. I was focused on taking scenic backroads, and today I got it. US-160 from Poplar Bluff to Alton starts out innocently enough: a generously well […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6107"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6107"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6110,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6107\/revisions\/6110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}