Vacation with the Garmin

Our Garmin has prevented many arguments in the car and has become an essential item to take along with us on vacation. However, we would have been better off if we just left it at home when we went on our most recent vacation to Arizona. We landed into Phoenix very late leaving my family itching to tuck into the beds at our rental house an hour or two outside of the city. We got our rental car, punched in the address into the Garmin, and departed for the house which was located in a relatively new community. We finally arrived at the gate and punched in the code. What we didn’t know at the time was that we were trying to reach a destination that “did not exist” in Garmin’s eyes. The house was newer than Garmin’s maps. The very large community all had very similar looking houses with the same five street names for all the streets. To make matters worse, we punched the address into the inferior Hertz GPS which started contradicting the Garmin. One would say left while the other would say right. All of these factors added up to equal a devastating state of frustration. Everyone was trying to add their input to where this place might be, including my 8 year old sister and 12 year old brother who very clearly had no idea to where this house was. We drove around in circles for almost three hours, desperately trying to stay awake and stay calm. The sun was about to rise and we were still not tucked away in our beds that were awaiting us. We finally gave up all hope and called my grandmother at four in the morning to guide us to our rental house. After a much needed nights rest we went to the car parked outside in the driveway. We had suctioned the GPS to the windshield like any other person would do…in Massachusetts. The suction sup had melted onto the windshield leaving a beautiful black ring on the glass. I guess we figured that we had to get all of the bad events out of the way that my family is notorious for experiencing.