Have you ever been lost and if so how off track were you?

I like to say that I am never lost, merely on a series of adventures.
My husband has a built in GPS in his head. It’s not nearly as fun when he’s driving.

Nope never.

I’m god awful with directions. I think that part of my brain just isnt fully developed lol. Like when I ask someone for directions I can remember the first 2 and then my brain just shuts off and I forget everything else they said.

When I first started driving I remember getting lost a couple times and finding myself in the middle of Camden at night time. This was also before GPS’s were common place so here I am 17 year old white boy in the middle of the ghetto at 1230–1am. Good times :P

I also took a wilderness survival class and on the first day of class our professor got us all in a van drove us out to the woods at random places and handed us a map and said “you’re here, you need to get here, see ya in an hour” . Yea our group got totally lost but that was fun cause we were just wandering around in the pine barrens for two hours eating wild blueberries :P

I’m very spatially challenged. I think it is a Brahmin thing. When I have to go somewhere new, I’ll try to plan to be there at least half an hour early because I have to allow for getting lost!

I ended up WAY out in the sticks, like 30 miles out in the middle of nowhere, when I was trying to drive one town over to pick up my friend from the train station. It looked like a straight shot on the map!! I had only lived in this area for a week or so, and missed my turn and drove blithely along through the sunshine. Turned around at a fire station when I realized that all I had been seeing for half an hour was cows, haha.

I also got pretty lost a couple of times in Paris this summer while looking for the late night bus after the metro had closed…It’s the best way to meet really interesting characters at 3 am.

I have NO sense of direction. If you were to put me in a large cardboard box, I’d have trouble finding my way out.

I get lost in my own city, where I’ve lived for decades. I’ll use MapQuest directions to get somewhere, and then I’ll have big problems getting back home (no, I never remember to search for and print directions for both routes!). I’ll think that I’m heading east, only to learn, eventually, that I’ve been traveling west.

I don’t panic or get upset. I just think, “Good job, Lori!” and take it all with humor. By staying calm, I actually do better and am able to get where I’m supposed to be. And, I always allow for plenty of extra traveling time.

Yes, a few times. Left handed, right brained blondes do not read maps well. haha
I also pull some pretty blonde maneuvers too like driving over dividers if necessary.
I’m a Dora the explorer type up here in the hills but getting lost in the city is a freaking nightmare for me.
EVERY time I go down town in the Capitol city I end up driving the wrong way on a one way street.

I hate the maze of downtown. Gimme the open road any day of the week.

Never really been lost. When I was young and hunting, I’d go deep into the woods and spin around a bunch of times and then try to dead reckon my way out without a compass. I think the most I was ever off was about ¼ mile. I do the same thing driving and it drives my s/o crazy.

Yes, in my car, more than I care to admit, which is why I keep a Garmin GPS device on board at all times.

I’ve taken a wrong trail a few times while hiking over the years. Maybe the longest distance was a half mile or so. Never a big deal; eventually the terrain makes it clear that you’re going in the wrong direction.

I don’t get lost. I might take a wrong turn, but I know where I am and how to get back to a familiar place.

One time backpacking I went on the far side of a ridge made of two peaks. The backside was still completely snow bound, and where the map had one lake, we saw two, both completely surrounded by snow. It was a little unnerving because we couldn’t tell exactly where we were, but we knew what to do to get to where we wanted to be.

I’m dyscalculic, so I can mix up directions: right and left, or east and west, or north and south… and never know that I did something wrong. Forget numbered streets: 12th street and Washington, or 21st?

I drive by memory. As long as I’ve driven there and back once in daylight and once at night, I’m good. The first time I go anywhere, I give myself an hour to get lost.

I’m either bang on time, or very early to every appointment I ever have. ^_^

I do get lost in my head though, its tough in here

I have a pretty good sense of direction, so I don’t usually get lost. I rarely rely on GPS, etc. Usually just a quick glance at a map is enough for me to know where to go. It’s when I get into trouble with one-way streets and blocked-off exits that I may get lost. When I go on trips with people, for example, I’m usually the navigator and there usually aren’t any problems.

There was one time when my friend and I were driving in L.A. and we got off the freeway in Glendale for a bathroom break and we had trouble getting back on; turns out we just passed the exit several times (and it was dark, and it wouldn’t have been a problem if my phone hadn’t died and thus I lost my map source). :P

Another time I was biking in a state park and even though you could use the mountains for reference and the park is surrounded by roads on all sides, I ended up lost on the various winding trails and it took me an extra half hour to figure out what I was doing.

@DominicX Oh shit…I took a wrong exit in L.A. a few years ago and ended up in serious ghettoville at midnight.
OMG!
Pollyannna hippie chick in pigtails deciding if I should get out of my car and go knock on some re-enforced ghetto barred liquor store door.
I got lucky…..a cop spotted me and swiftly escorted me back to the freeway.

Whew!
I hate L.A.!!!!

lol @Shippy !

We got off on the wrong exit in east LA one night. The cruisers were out cruising, driving slow and we were stuck in the middle of it. It’s the first time I ever saw caskets displayed in store windows like Macys at Christmas time.

@Judi It’s a whole ‘nother world, yes it is!

I feel like I can’t get lost. I’ve tried.

Sometimes I will just drive in random directions, just to see what I see. But when it comes time to go home, somehow we always seem to hit the right highway just when it is needed.

I think lost is a feeling. It has to do with how much you believe you know about the geography. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been looking for a little dirt road that goes for miles through the woods and ends up at such and such a town. The road isn’t even on any map, and bam! I go straight where I want to go.

I think that people who have no conception of geography can get lost even when they are on the right road. They feel lost. They lack confidence. They can’t picture where they might be. Because of that, they are lost.

I always feel like I know where I am. Maybe if I were in China and I couldn’t read the signs or talk to the people, I could be lost. But not here. I just feel like I know where I am. I have confidence about that, and thus, I would never define myself as lost, even if I took a wrong turn. I’d know I’d taken the wrong turn, and I’d feel I could figure out what to do to fix it. So how could I be lost?

Before the days of GPS I was once lost while walking in the woods in Steuben county. It was November and the sky was completely overcast. It took me 2 hours to figure it out. That does not sound like a long time but let me tell you, that was scary for me. I flush even now thinking about it. I never get lost – usually.
I got back to the trailer just before it got dark. Whew!

Yes, mostly because I want to get lost. When I want to get back to where I should be I just pull out my map and compass and head for the nearest road.

I was once doing a bushwalk with my daughter, who was about 3 at the time, and 2 adult friends. We had been following a set of markers nailed on trees, at some point we realised we had not seen a marker for a while and then tried to turn around and backtrack, we could find no markers and at that point realised we were lost, it was very frightening actually. For some reason I still cannot explain my two friends went off alone to try and find the river we had been following earlier, my daughter and I stayed where we were and waited, I can’t tell you how pleased I was to see my friends again and to hear that they had found the way out. We walked out, called in to the wineshop on the way back and bought a 2L cask of red wine, I don’t think there was much left by the end of the evening. Getting lost in the bush is not something I will forget. To anyone finding themselves in the same position I cannot emphasise strongly enough do not split up, it was such a stupid thing to do.

We went two days out of our way in Italy because I couldn’t read the road map and road signs at the same time and missed a turn. We had to double back to get back to the route we had chosen.
I got trifocals when I got home so I could look down at the map and ahead for signs at the same time.