Navigation Nightmares

 So, last week we landed home safely after our recent road trip to see my mother-in-law.  I will not do a recap post, as nothing notable happened other than eating copious amounts of food (my God, these people and their food!  Every time I turned around someone was offering me something to eat, never mind the fact I was still swallowing something that someone else had just insisted I eat) and catching up (it was truly a wonderful visit and I am glad we went).  But I want to discuss the one issue that kept cropping up over and over again during this trip in an annoyingly, random manner.

What you should know is that we had our old route down pat.  We didn't need navigation.  Usually, the trip went like this - we would drive up to Mom's house in PA and we would either stay there the entire time OR we would stay for the night and take her with us up to CT to see my brother-in-law and his family.  Since she has moved to CT our trip would entail a completely different and new route for our trip.

So, since are completely in touch with technology and hip to the ways of the world these days, we turned to Google Maps.  Failing that, we also had options to use Waze and whatever random navigation aid that my car provides.  We were set is what I'm trying to convey.  Or so we thought.

Early on, the first bit of the trip was part of our usual route so no navigation was necessary.  But once navigation was necessary we discovered that The Husband's Google Maps had decided it didn't to talk to us after the initial instruction, oh sure it would show the route on the phone but wouldn't say a word.  So we turned to the weird navigation system in my car which, somehow, works through an app on my phone.

We quickly discovered that this particular navigation system would lag - it would tell us to turn well after we had already made the turn, etc.  So basically, it was completely useless.

We then went to Waze on my phone...which also stopped talking after telling us to drive safely  

OMG!  We were losing our minds.  FINALLY, The Husband's Google Maps decided it wasn't mad at us anymore and directed us to the hotel we had planned to stop for the night.

This scenario repeated itself over and over again throughout the entire trip; it's an actual miracle that we even made it there...much less home.  Then, as we were navigating ourselves to the last hotel for the trip home, my Google Maps thought it would be a great idea to send us to the hotel via a 2.5 mile trip through a college town (luckily she was on speaking terms with us at the time); without informing us that had we just gone to the next exit, we would have been on the very doorstep of the hotel we were trying to find.  I think, at this point, she was just being mean.

So today, I tested it again in my own backyard.  I needed to return some books to the library.  Now, I KNOW where the library is but wanted to see if it would work.  I put in the address for the library into Google Maps and hit start.  It told me to get on the main road.  And then stopped.  Then about halfway down the main road, it piped up and told me again to get on the main road.  And then remained silent and frozen for the remainder of the trip - not even bothering to show me the directions on the screen.

For the journey back to the house, I used Waze.  Again, I was told to get on the main road and drive safely.  And then she clammed up and froze, in the very same way Google Maps did on the trip to the library.

Every single person we have described this issue to thinks we are crazy; because they have NEVER had these issues.

What the actual hell is going on here?  We are not stupid people.  We are not luddites.  I've tried using these apps with the Bluetooth on and off in the car - it doesn't matter.  The apps will only work when they want to work, it seems.

Have any of you had these issues with a navigation app?  Are we crazy?  Or are we missing some vital piece to navigating?  Do you know WHY this is happening and what we can do to fix it (of course, I have Googled it to death and still haven't figured out what is wrong).  Or should we be using a different application altogether since, obviously, these three don't work well.