Never heard of MapsCo but we used the Rand McNally Road Atlas, which by your description is the same thing just from a different company.
Ahh, the Trip-Tiks! A huge part of any trip was finalizing all our stops along the way so we could run down to “Triple-A” and have them custom-collate that thick bundle of vertical maps.
I swear that following along with the Trip-Tik felt more “techie”, and more fun than any GPS.
By the way, I have to listen to that annoying GPS voice when my wife’s driving, but on my personal road trips I do everything manually, and there’s a lot of “If I keep the sun on my right, I should hit County ZZ eventually…”
(and then I pull up Google Maps when I get TOO lost…)
I had a Hagstrom road atlas for the New York suburbs and a Thomas Bros atlas when visiting the west coast.
Absolutely! And thanks for reminding me of them. When I navigated for my Dad, it was exciting when we went off one page of the Trip-Tik to another.
GPS is good when you get lost, except when it gets you lost. Our first stop was in Elko, Nevada, where it navigated us to the middle of nowhere where our motel was supposed to be. Luckily we had stayed there on our previous trip, and got ourselves straightened out quickly.
When I was 4, long before interstates, my mom took my brother and me to visit our grandparents in Miami Beach. It was a 4-day trip by Greyhound from Cleveland. Imagine taking a 4yo and 7yo on a 4-day (each way) Greyhound trip!
When I was 3 we moved from Texas to Ohio and my mom took us by train while my dad drove up with our stuff. My two older brothers tortured me the entire way. But because they did I actually remember more than I normally would have. Water was taken in those paper cones from a dispenser and my brothers tore a hole in the bottom of one and put it back for me to use, I remember crying all the way back to show my mom the water dripping out of my water cone.
And don’t forget, there were no “fast food” restaurants on those early road trips. No McDonald’s where everything is pretty standard; you had to guess at which local root beer stand (“Mugs O’ Froth” or “Bud’s Suds”?) might have decent burgers.
I remember driving,OK, riding, from NYC to Miami in the 50’s. Down US 1 as mentioned above, and seeing South of the Boarder.
And it’s still there are operating 65 years later. I also remember our '51 Ford using lot’s of oil both ways.
I never went, but half the cars in New York seemed to have South of the Border bumper stickers.
And here is a very old joke to keep border and boarder distinct.
Miss F, the teacher: Jimmy, you look distracted today. Now, where is the Polish border.
Jimmy: I’m sorry, I never got breakfast.
Miss F: Sorry to hear that, but where is the Polish border.
Jimmy: The Polish boarder is in bed with mamma, that’s why I didn’t get breakfast.
I have the Rand McNally version and still use it.
Of course the AAA Trip-Tiks were subject to good old fashioned human error, which had the potential to get you just as lost. North Carolina has two very similarly named towns, Morrisville and Mooresville. The former is in the Raleigh-Durham metro area, while the latter is in the Charlotte metro area. When I was a kid we lived in Mooresville. When relatives from out of state came to visit, they ordered a Trip-Tik, someone apparently misheard or otherwise got the town name wrong, and they got a Trip-Tik directing them to Moorisville. Luckily they’d been to visit us before and realized while en route that those directions were wrong, and managed to find their way to our house anyway.
In a way, this has kind of come full circle. Until maybe the last decade the fact that chain restaurants were all exactly the same no matter where you were was considered a good thing, because you knew exactly what to expect, even if you were in an unfamiliar city. But now I can pull out my phone and see what local places nearby get decent reviews. So now that it feels less risky trying some local diner, I’d rather go to the local place and experience some local character, rather than some boring chain place that’s the same everywhere.
And no iPad or smartphone to keep 'em busy! (Hope they were well stocked for comic books.)
Or just staring out the window…
I’m hoping my g-g-generation possesses some secret mental advantage over this next one, due to the fact that we were bored for long stretches during our formative years.
I do not believe these are at all the same thing. The Rand McNally Road Atlas is a very large stitched book whereas the thing purplehorseshoe is describing is smaller and thicker (usually hundreds of pages). The road atlas typically has each state on one page or on a double-truck.
The spiral map book (I am familiar with the Thomas Brothers books) have a consistent fixed area on each page/truck-pair and page numbers top/bottom/edges to tell you where to find the next page of adjacent area. There is a page or two near the front that shows the greater view diced into squares marked with the page that shows that area.
I have not seen large coverage spiral type map books: the Thomas Guides I know tend to cover only several major regional counties in pretty close detail.
The one I’m thinking of was from 20-30 years ago, and I can’t be positive it was Rand McNally. Pretty sure the cover was yellow, it was spiral bound, it had large pages, and the edge of each page directed you to a different page in the book. It may or may not have been one state per book.
You’re right, it’s Hagstrom, not Rand McNally. And the one I have is for my county, not the state. (I’m frankly shocked that I still have one. Who uses maps anymore?)
This site shows a sample for parts of New Jersey, and if you scroll the image to the right it shows some pages.
I think we once had a sensible road atlas that arranged the entries geographically, so that you could find a state based on where it was, turn the page and be on a nearby state, rather than that stupid-ass alphabetical ordering that is common to most of them. It may not have been actual atlas, as such, but a hotel chain directory with fairly detailed map pages with all their locations in the back.
I remember those. Very popular with salesmen driving from call to call. There was a stationary store near where I worked that carried them for the local counties.
I also remember a Rand McNally store in a local mall that had all sorts of maps for virtually every world country and area in the USA. Planning a trip to Calcutta? Here’s your map. Looks like they are still available.
On a family trip, 'round about noon you’ll hear “I’m starving. Gimme the Culver’s Map!” We make sure to have a current map (it’s really just a folded placemat) in the glove box*.
…
*so the map that’s not really a map is in the glove box that’s never once had gloves in it…
Hey, I put a pair of gloves in my glovebox, just so I could say it was properly named.