[dljsjr]

Anybody remember Triptiks from AAA? You'd go to a AAA office or call them on the phone, tell them where you were going, and in return you'd get a printed spiral top-bound pad with your trip broken down in to multiple legs, the roads/routes pre-highlighted, gas stops and prices estimated in, a list of sites for stopping off at, etc. All human curated and human annotated (the roads on your route were literally gone over by a person with a Highlighter). I'm sure it was all pulled from some sort of centralized/normalized/standardized data source but the human touch was definitely there.

They were awesome. When we were growing up most big family trips were in the car because gas and hotels were just so much more affordable than flying an entire family anywhere. I got to be the "navigator" on so many trips by helping family members read the Triptiks.

Apparently AAA still offers these, but they're generated digitally now via their app, and you can print them off if you want. But something about those human-built Triptiks were really really special.

[massysett]

In a lot of ways, electronic maps are still inferior to the Triptik.

Even the Rand McNally showed highway rest areas and picnic areas. The Triptik also showed gas stations. Electronic maps often lack this entirely, at least in easy form.

The Triptik shows what you need to know while on a long motor trip. The electronic map emphasizes details I don't need.

At a glance the paper map tells me whether a road is free limited-access, toll limited-access, multi-lane divided, two lanes but major, two lanes and minor, a country lane, or a dirt road. Electronic map only tells me this if I zoom in on a satellite view, and it might even route me over a two-lane road to save five minutes on a two-hour trip when there's a much safer freeway that most drivers would prefer.

Paper map has little dotted lines for scenic routes. Electronic map doesn't.

Mostly I'm surprised the electronic maps don't have these things after all these years. Maybe Apple will get them eventually. Google is busy stuffing ads into its maps.

[larrik]

I've been growing pretty dissatisfied with the state of electronic maps. Basic things that are usually either impossible or difficult while using Google Maps or Apple Maps for directions:

- What road am I on? What town am I in?

  - and other flavors of "where the hell am I, anyway?"

  - This is especially annoying when on the phone and the person is asking where you are, and the best you can answer is "Google says I'm X minutes away"

- What road is this coming up next?

  - instead it puts the name halfway along the road, which is out of view...

  - Some of the true nav systems (Garmin, etc) do this better.

[ChuckMcM]

I'm pretty convinced that Google just doesn't understand information economics. In case you haven't noticed, Apple maps are getting better and better and I prefer their turn-by-turn directions over that of Google.

The interesting thing is that Apple now offers "explore" vs "driving" maps, I hope they also add "walking" or "Cycling" maps. And because they aren't driven by advertising sales, the maps can be more useful without compromising sales revenue.

If Apple decided to invest in a crawler/indexer with a search front end to give Siri the data sources for better response, and to allow for "pure" informational search (rather than search-ad/revenue prioritized search), once it got good enough for that it would put Google into a very tight spot. (Well tighter than the one it currently finds itself in).

[kortilla]

>Mostly I'm surprised the electronic maps don't have these things after all these years. Maybe Apple will get them eventually. Google is busy stuffing ads into its maps.

Yeah, google is always going to be trash for anything that doesn’t align well with advertising. Better to show a Starbucks than a rest area, etc.

[colanderman]

Google Maps doesn't even show exit numbers unless you are incredibly zoomed in. They are near useless for at-a-glance visual navigation.

[nemonemo]

Those two types of maps are targeting different groups -- paper maps targeting the somewhat advanced users who know the basic navigation and have little need to consult the legend. The electronic maps target much wider audience and can be dumbed down since people can interact with the map. Sure, the electronic maps probably can stuff more info to be shown at a glance, but my impression is that they chose not to.

[wyclif]

Former land surveyor here. Big fan of paper maps, even though I still use Gaia, FarOut, etc. My faves are the USGS topographical map sets. There's just something you can't replace about the experience of navigating using topo maps and a compass.

[kulahan]

Travel is such an personal thing - it's people in an environment at least somewhat foreign to them. Trusting someone to plan it is a pretty intimate thing, and companies don't do intimate things very well anymore. Too many people, too few companies.

I'd pay good money for more personal experiences from companies, especially when it comes to something like this, but it's not easy. The wife and I were looking for a honeymoon package, but neither "beach" nor "romantic European getaway" were on our list. Roughly 90% of travel companies were out of ideas after that. It's literally their JOB to plan trips and they can't deviate from a template. It's pain incarnate.

[marcosdumay]

If it's something like what we had at my country, it's not a travel plan.

It's a book, fully indexed, with searchable and fully reviewed information about the place you are going and the path in between. You use it to make your own plan, or to improvise.

Specifically about improvisation, it has become almost impossible nowadays because there is no reliable information about anything.

[fbdab103]

I am boring, but one of the reason I keep wanting to take a cruise is because I do not want to plan anything. Show up at this place, at this time and then there will be a bunch of exotic* stuff to see/do/eat.

*Exotic very much being in the eye of the beholder, but something different from my daily costal urban experience.

[rjh29]

I understand why that niche doesn't exist - most people looking for a personal experience tend to plan it themselves. Though it would be nice to say "I want to go here, here and here" and have someone book all of the hotels and transport.

[Pxtl]

Travel agents still exist. If they don't know how to plan the vacation of your dreams, they know somebody who does. I used one to plan a trip to Florida, which was obviously a normal-ass tourist thing but they got in touch with another agent who knew the ins and outs of where to stay at the Space Coast and the pros and cons of onsite stay vs offsite for Disney.

[ghaff]

There are specialty outfits specific to an area/country and/or type of activity that I've used which are pretty good. But most mainstream travel agents have been book a cruise/flight/tour for pretty much forever.

My dad had one for years who was better than that but I've only sometimes used specialty agencies, e.g. for English walking trips.

[bobwaycott]

Just curious here—what sort of things were on your list that you couldn’t find? If there were better templates, what kind of trips would you expect to be able to plan?

[navane]

Most innovation sells you an inferior product for a lower price. It is almost never better than what was available in the past, just cheaper.

Life becomes a series of more, but lower value experiences.

[eternityforest]

It makes life easier at the expense of some indescribable sense of "quality" or connotations of "wealth", the feeling that the product makes a statement about the skill of the maker and the user, that there's real skill involved not just a technological cheat code in real life.

Which seems to be very culture specific, it's important to some but not others.

I don't have much doubt that people get lost less with phones now. It's reliable and available on demand at any moment. Basic utilitarian trips might even use less gas because if dynamic traffic data.

The main thing we lost is the sense that things are real and solid, rather than unearned power ups in a global scale video game, but by technical engineering measures, it seems like almost every single product outside of the arts has improved, year after year.

Old analog stuff is cool, but if I only had room in my bag for one, I'm probably going to take the latest new version, every time.

[drdec]

The positive side of the trade off is that the technology is usually available to more people by being more affordable.

[bumby]

This is an interesting thought. What other examples are you thinking of besides the maps? And does this extend to innovations that create a whole new space, or is it just when innovation does an existing thing differently?

[AlbertCory]

There's still an AAA office that I drive past all the time. Never been in there, though. I should go and ask for a Triptik sometime.

When I told people I went to Alaska, the inevitable answer was, "Oh, did you go on a cruise?" No, I didn't go on a forking cruise. Those are for lazy people.

What I've started doing is booking a short (2-4 days) trip inside the country or state, and being independent before & after that. You still get some guidance and socializing and seeing things you wouldn't otherwise, but your whole vacation isn't locked in. I recommend this.

[squokko]

Don't know why you hate cruises. Definitely the most cost effective way to see multiple spots on the Alaskan coastline.

[sizzzzlerz]

When I was a child, my parents took the tribe around the country for 2 months. We towed our trailer behind an International Traveall. To prepare, my mom worked with AAA to design the route we were going to take starting from our home in California, up to Seattle, across to Yellowstone and Glacier, across the midwest to Philadelphia, down the east coast to Florida then back home through the south, Texas, New Mexico, Utah, and Nevada. The trip require a dozen of these books. I remember spending hours pouring through these prior to our leaving, just fascinated with all the roads, and cities, and attractions. We kept them for years afterwards and I continued looking at them for several years. Not sure what happened to them, however. Great times.

[HappyJoy]

Oh, yes! My Dad used to have these made for our summer road trips. I used to love pouring over the maps before the trip to get hyped up. Then, in the car, following along as we drove. I forgot about that till your comment reminded me. Thanks for the nostalgia!

[dylan604]

I always wanted the computer program Clark used to plan the route for the family trip to Wally World.

[boilerupnc]

Old-school AAA TripTik® Walkthrough [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcMih8fjq5Q

[dljsjr]

This is amazing! It's exactly how I remember them in my head!

[worthless-trash]

Thank you from those of us not in the US.

[JCM9]

Yes. I remember going into the AAA office with my dad before family vacations to pick them up. They gave you a whole pre-trip briefing too on current construction, tips and any issues you might encounter. While apps like Waze do a great job of getting you from A-Z they completely lack the contextual information about where you’re going, things to see along the way and other details. One really had to pay a lot more attention to what was happening too vs just waiting for some voice in a box telling you to turn off the highway. Rest stops and roadside attractions where part of the adventure too vs todays boring cookie cutter outfits with the same chains.

I probably sound old and nostalgic but there were some things that were just “better” when life was a bit slower and not completely driven by tech—-and I’m someone that works in tech!

Those trips really felt like an adventure whereas now it’s just push some buttons and drive.

[jll29]

In theory, I can set my car navigation system to "Paris" now and drive there for a coffee (in about 9 hours or 788 km). I can even half-way change my mind and drive to Prague instead, without any preparation. The car will make sure that a lot of silly mistakes will be avoided, at the expense of perhaps some new silly mistakes (but fewer than without navigation system, for most casual drivers).

Of course, that modern ability lacks the anticipation, excitement and celebration of the annual family trip experience that you talk about, and yes, a personalized physical map that not just aids your navigation to your holiday/vacation destination but later becomes a memory artifact/artefact when said road trip is fondly remembered and re-imagined.

We invent electronic replacements for things and processes without giving much thought to the positive aspects of the experience that we may wish to retain (or better: re-create) before replacing them. Naturally, the first iterations of the substitute will be lacking. Later refinements will be evaluated relative to previous versions of the electronic replacement, not the original experience, which is soon forgotten. That's why many electronic/automatic replacements are lacking: examples include manual maps versus car navigation systems, human layout creation versus DTP publishing, traditional printing versus print on demand, traditional slide photography and development versus digital photography. The new is not just a replacement of the old, it is different. But the new often renders the old uneconomical and makes it disappear, like it or not, even when they tell us that the new thing is "complementary" to the old. For better or worse, free market economy does not have a place for something _and_ its substitute, only the cheaper one of the two.

I would pay for a nicely printed and bound, personalized street map of a planned family holiday/vacation if the price was appropriate, and they did not ask me for the date and time of departure... ;-)

[lmm]

It's easier than ever to go off on an adventure if you want to. Any turn you like, you can take, you don't have to worry about getting lost. Anywhere you think looks like a nice detour, you can add it in and see immediately how much time it's going to add.

Most people don't bother, but I don't think that's the technology's fault. The technology absolutely supports it.

[madrox]

As a kid on many a roadtrip in the 80s, I have a special fondness for triptiks. It gave me something to focus on and it gave my parents some peace as I quietly studied maps. I have a vivid memory of going to AAA before a roadtrip where someone would walk us through the route they chose.

However, it's all nostalgia. There is nothing about them that I would've preferred over a phone or tablet with working internet, had they been a thing back then.

[eternityforest]

There's nothing about anything that anyone prefers over a phone with working internet...

It's almost like a local maximum, if you plot (total happiness-total boredom) against (total screen hours).

Almost no individual activity is more appealing than scrolling (As we can infer from most people's behavior these days), but people will tell you that they want a life that isn't just scrolling and mobile games, and people are happier when they do more than screens.

[chordalkeyboard]

AAA will also print them themselves and mail them to members upon request.

[jhallenworld]

I just tried the online site: my complaint is that they only show AAA-rated places to eat. On the other hand, the "5 diamond" places look really nice... it might be interesting to try some of them. I forgot all about AAA-rated restaurants.

[Turing_Machine]

The Milepost used to be essential for those who traveled in Alaska and Northwestern Canada. It's still quite useful, given that there are plenty of places there that don't have cellular service or any other kind of internet access.

https://themilepost.com/about-us/

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

I remember going to AAA offices where they would pull out a map and use highlighter on the spot and mark up the map in front of you. Nothing was prepared in advance.

Google Maps is constantly making weasel changes to try to get people to sign in and inserting ads for businesses. OpenStreetMaps is great offline, no sign-in required, but it's still too janky.

[nerdbert]

OSM is far superior to Google or Apple if you're not driving or riding public transit. They have much better pedestrian/cycle accessibility data. Google will send you on preposterous detours on a bike, whereas OSM gives you exactly what you need to know to take the shortest viable route.

[dimator]

Well, realistically, if the AAA highlighter operator was later compelled to testify as to your driving plan, they would.

[jjeaff]

Went on a road trip 2 years ago and an older family member went to AAA in socal and got a physical triptik book for the trip.

[0x445442]

Yep, TripTiks we’re awesome. With map apps I feel as though I’m constantly battling them as I always expect the top of the map/phone to represent north.

Maybe it was because I grew up in a rural area but I much prefer NSEW directions and looking at a physical map.

[wirrbel]

The German equivalent still offers this and out of curiosity I ordered it once it was fairly disappointing, a map, some travel info, thats about it.

[dieselgate]

As of about 7 years ago AAA was where I'd always go to get paper maps in general - wasn't aware of Triptiks at all

[green-salt]

Ended up using this once for a short trip, but about a year later ended up getting a satnav device.

[mxuribe]

I had always heard of this - and so highly regarded for years(!) - but never used myself.

[vVv111y]

Former navigator here ready to go. I was just like that, unforgettable memories

[cafard]

Yes, though I don't remember the highlighting.

[Stratoscope]

I loved TripTiks! And yes, I too was the family navigator as a kid, whether with a TripTik or an ordinary road map.

My other claim to fame was that I was the only one in the family - maybe in the entire neighborhood - who could fold a paper map so everything fell into place and it looked like new.

All the adults would just force the map to fold along whichever creases they felt like folding. I let the map "fold itself" with the map deciding where it wanted to be folded, and me just executing the map's wishes.

Specifically, first I would find the one crease that ran all the way across the map in the same direction - it was a "valley" or a "tent" all the way across, depending on which side you were looking at.

Then I'd find the next crease that was the same across the now-folded map. And the next one, and so on.

Adults didn't know this trick. They would fold along the creases, but they didn't take the time to let the map teach them which crease to fold first.

This is kind of like something I learned recently when I rescued a stray kitten from the street: You don't find a cat, the cat finds you.

Back to TripTiks, I bought one on eBay a few months ago, and it turned out to be an awesome road trip a southern California family took in the late 1960s.

First is the "front matter", with pages on:

  Using your TripTik
  Strip Map Legend
  About Accommodations
  In Case Of Accident
  Western Radio Stations
  The SPEED that's set is your best bet
  Trip Planning
  Expenses
  Entering Canada and Returning to the United States
  A Summary of Safety Responsibility Laws in Canada

Now we start the trip from Temple City, near Pasadena. Many of the pages were 2-3 page foldouts. I will use the original state abbreviations instead of our modern two-letter ones.

  Temple City to I-10 East
  I-10 to I-15 through San Bernardino
  San Bernardino to Las Vegas
  Local map of Las Vegas
  Las Vegas to Beaver, Utah
  Beaver to Salt Lake City
  Local map of Salt Lake City
  Salt Lake City to Logan, turning onto US 89 East
  Logan to Alpine, Wyo.
  Alpine to Yellowstone National Park
  Local map of Yellowstone
  Yellowstone to Gillette, Wyo.
  Gillette to Deadwood, S. Dak.
  An optional loop all around the Black Hills Region
  A TripTik Supplement for US 85/14/94 where they didn't have the map
  Belfield, N. Dak. to Bismarck, N. Dak.
  Bismarck to Fargo and on to US 81
  Fargo to Winnipeg, Man.
  Winnipeg to Kenora, Ont.
  Kenora to Port Arthur on the Thunder Bay
  Port Arthur to Nipigon, Ont.
  Nipigon to Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.
  Sault Ste. Marie to North Bay, Ont.
  Another missing-map supplement for North Bay to Ottawa, Ont.
  And finally a local map of Ottawa, their destination

Every one of these TripTik pages has a description of the towns and cities along the way, with hotel, motel, restaurant, and service station listings.

Thanks for mentioning TripTiks. It was fun for me to go through this road trip in my mind and on paper just now.