It all started innocently enough.
A few minutes spent looking at a map, checking out what was between point A and point B.
That's all.
We had slack time built into the drive, it was through a part of the country we'd never seen before, so we checked out our battered atlas.
"Hey, Ripon's kind of on the way, and only about a half hour or so south of our destination. Let's route so that we can check it out."
We had a week to kill at our cabin rental in middle-of-nowhere, WI, and a potentially cool town, a half hour away, sounded like something we should investigate.
Really, if we'd been paying attention, we were given a warning before it was actually too late. But at the time, it just seemed like one of those things.
Directions from the mapping website told us to get off the main highway, 151, and onto a secondary highway, 26.
Which led us through miles of farm land until eventually, after 30+ minutes, bringing us back to... Hwy 151.
Yes, we were instructed to get off the highway, for the sole purpose of driving through nothing for 40+ minutes until we were BACK to the same highway from which we started.
But, we continued to follow the directions as outlined, even while commenting on how odd they had been thus far.
We had a plan, dammit.
And we were gonna stick to it.
5 miles further up highway 151, we were instructed to get off, and onto highway 26, AGAIN. And we did.
Because taking 151 straight to the interstate and onto our destination from THERE would be BORING, and we were on VACATION, and we wanted to SIGHT SEE, mapping website logic be damned....
Anyhow, our second time on highway 26 was uneventful, and we eventually ended up in Ripon, just like the print outs said we'd be.
And it looked like a cute town, worthy of a return visit, and life was good.
For a moment.
But the moment passed, and everything turned bad.
We exited the west side of Ripon, and were immediately back in remote farm country, without ever having seen any signs for highway 44. Highway 44 was our alleged hook up, so to speak. It went north out of Ripon, according to our directions and the atlas, and would eventually connect us to 116, a road I'd traveled on before, and one that would lead us straight to our destination.
Highway 44 did not appear to exist, in real life. We were out of town, and there was no signs for HWY 44, and we were headed west through more middle of nowhere without a plan.
My wife looked at the map.
"We'll be ok, I think." she said.
"About 5 miles up, there's a north south, #71, that should take us to to Hwy 21, which we can take back east to 116. "
We were still lighthearted about our drive, approaching the bad directions and lack of signs with good humour.
For another 5 miles, until we saw the sign that our road would be closed, just ahead, and we were to turn south to detour.
The lightheartedness ended, as we detoured south as directed, further away from our destination.
My wife, always the trooper, checked the map.
"No, no. I think we'll still be ok, because we should still cross 71, and we'll just be on it for a bit longer."
2 minutes later, we came to highway 71, and....It was closed, too.
"Well, hell." My navigator said.
"I'm out of ideas, we have to go back to Ripon."
And we did.
And the round trip to end up where we started? 35 minutes.
My daughter woke up from her nap as we were checking out the map for our next attempt to successfully leave Ripon and ultimately reach our destination.
"Are we at the cottage yet?" she sleepily asked.
"Nope." I answer.
"When will we be there?"
"Your guess is as good as mine, darlin."
My navigator looked up from the map.
"County Road F heads NE out of Berlin, and will eventually run into Hwy 21....."
Which I know will lead to Omro, where I can pick up 116 to Winneconne....
Let's do it!
Except once I was on what appeared to be County Road F, it meandered in a SE direction, until we found ourselves... Back in Ripon.
I made a terse joke about how it was actually County Road FU....
For those keeping score.... 45 more minutes to end up back where we started... again.
We
Could
Not
Get
Out
Of
Ripon.
And it was beginning to be a bit unnerving, for a guy that prides himself on finding places, picking the right routes, knowing what direction I'm going, all the time....
I grew up on Stephen King novels and old Twilight Zone episodes, and I'd just ended up back in the same town for the 3rd time, unable to leave it.....
My mind started to wander.
Would we discover that the town itself was evil, and preyed on random travelers?
Would I come across a huge fertilizer plant with car carriers full of out of state cars parked out front, and make the horrifying realization that WE were the fertilizer?
Would I have to steal WI license plates to disguise my car from the local sheriff and his men (all possessed by a long buried demon of course), long enough to escape via some random country road to god-knows-where?
"Are we there yet?" my daughter asked again, pulling me back from my thoughts of demons and evil in America's heartland.
Another literary influence popped into my mind, and I started to smile.
I thought about Winnie The Pooh.
The story where Pooh, Piglet and Rabbit were lost, and kept on ending up at the same sand pit, when looking for a way home.
Pooh, the bear with very little brain, decided they should try to find the sand pit again, instead of a path out of the woods, and by doing so, guarantee that the would not end up back at the sand pit...
In other words, they should stop looking for a way out of the woods.
"That road, right there. It heads north, and looks like a major road." I tell my wife, as I put the car back in gear, and head out of the parking lot of the empty store where we had stopped to look at the map again.
.
"Ok..."
"We're taking it."
"To where?" My wife asks.
"Does it really matter at this point?" I ask in return.
I threw the Pooh reference at her, she laughed.
2 miles up the random road, we found out we were on HWY 44, the very road we needed to be on in the first place.
Lightheartedness returned.
Music was turned back on.
When my daughter asked me "When will we be there?" a minute later, I could actually give her an answer.
Hwy 44 did exactly what the map said it was supposed to do. We continued on without incident.
Our 2 hour trip did, in fact, take more than 4 hours.
We decided we did not need to visit Ripon again, though we figured we'd end up back there at some point, completely by accident.
But I was comforted in the knowledge that when this DOES happen, I now know what NOT to do to fix it.
Thanks Pooh.
