Way to go

A relic from long ago is making a comeback, and no, it's not The Big Orange. It's the way people used to find their way from here to Sheboygan. 

First, we would go by the verbal directions from the guy at work who knew how to get everywhere from anywhere. You could tell he knew his way around, because he peppered his directions with such phrases as, "You stay on Rt 222 and that dumps you right onto 372" and "once you get off the back roads, you pick up 40 and you can really make time."

Classic changemaker

But once you found that his directions are no doggone good, you would stop at a gas station where the attendant, who always had a rag hanging out of one pocket and one of those changemaker things on his belt, would present you with a folded roadmap that showed you all the roads in beautiful color, and also all the locations along the way of his company's service stations ("World's Cleanest Rest Rooms").

Caution: once you unfolded that roadmap, you would never fold it up again as crisply as when you got it. Mapmakers worked around the clock to make sure of that.

A lot of it has to do with many of us yearning to hit the road again, and not necessarily wanting to be lectured by the voice on our dashboard GPS ("At the next intersection, hard left turn, and then proceed one quarter mile to your location"). It's more fun to have your co-pilot say, "Hang a louie up here and then it's just down the road a piece."

"We're seeing obviously an uptick in travel across the board. So, as we're sort of coming out of the COVID pandemic, people are really traveling more," said AAA's Ragina Ali.  AAA, the auto club, printed up a million paper maps last year to go with its "TripTik" direction planners. 

Another point to remember: having a TripTik or map with you means you don't have to worry about getting a cell signal. Who knows what kind of coverage you'll have outside of Sheboygan?