# Your geographical misconceptions **URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-geographical-misconceptions/929294 **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share **Created:** [December 30, 2020, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-geographical-misconceptions/929294 "2020-12-30T20:58:33Z") **Posts on this page:** 1 **Showing post:** 691
### Author: ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy) #### Post date: [March 7, 2021, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-geographical-misconceptions/929294/691 "2021-03-07T02:25:00Z")
> [@enipla](#): > > Not a misconception, but an observation. I first started Driving in Denver Colorado. Most of the streets are on a grid North/South, East/West. And you can often see the Rocky Mountains which are to the West. Between that and that I’m in GIS, I use cardinal descriptions for directions. > > My Wife is from Pittsburgh. Not a straight street in the city. Confused by three rivers and many bridges. My Wife gives directions by saying left turn/right turn. My wife, like most women, is a little bit geo-directionally challenged compared to the average guy. Not lost; just a little handicapped vs Joe Average. I’m a navigation whizkid. She grew up in Tucson. Which is a basin surrounded by 4 sets of very differently shaped mountains more or less aligned with the cardinal directions. The roads are mostly a grid and between the mountains and the eternal sunshine, figuring out which way in North is not hard. So we get hitched and she moves to Las Vegas to join me where I’ve been living. Years before anyone had GPS or Google maps or whatever. Vegas is largely, though not entirely, gridded like Tucson. She’s lost and it doesn’t get better with experience. Why not? Vegas is in a basin, surrounded by distinctive mountain ranges on all 4 sides. But they’re totally in different places vs Tucson. The close big tall ones are N in Tucson and W in Vegas. The distant flat ones are S in Tucson and E in Vegas. Etc. Her gyros were totally and irrecoverably tumbled. It was funny to watch. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-geographical-misconceptions/929294)._