Back Road Musings

For those of you that know where Union Springs is, and thought that it was somewhat remote, we've moved into even deeper remote and redneck. One of the keys to getting from place to place in upstate NY is knowing the backroads (it is probably key everywhere, but here there just aren't lots of main roads, so if you take those, you are usually going WAY out of the way, on the other hand, taking unknown backroads could very easily dump you on a cowpath road that will eventually send you in the opposite direction you want to be going in). I knew most of the backroads and short cuts from Union Springs, I don't know them in Conquest. So I have been talking with locals and using a combination of Google, Expedia & Yahoo Maps with occasional help from Mapquest. By combining all four I can usually figure out the best/fastest way to get somewhere new.
The difficulty I have come acrossed is that many of the roads up here in the north end of the county don't have signs. Really, no road name signs. So far there appears to be a pattern, the road that you are on will not have a road sign, but the crossroads will. So just remember what road you turned on, right? Wrong. The roads often change names when you change townships and/or villages. The crossroad signs are for roads that cross at 90 degree angles, not for Y's or forks or merges or vears or splits. So it can get quite complicated and you end up driving on intuition with some basic orienteering thrown in when necessary. Although this all gets thrown out the window if you happen onto one of the cowpath roads. In that situation, you're screwed, you either have to turn around and go back to the last road you were on, or follow it to the end, figure out where you are, figure out where you were initally trying to go, and then figure out how to get there base on where you are that you never planned to be.