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Not News: GPS Sends Tourists Down Abandoned Road; News: Tourists Needed Rescued by Sled Dogs

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GPS

You really aren’t supposed to turn right when it says.

Global Positioning Systems are great things. It is amazing that, using satellites, a computer can triangulate your position to a great deal of accuracy, and then use that information, plus data about roads, traffic, and speed limits to accurately tell you the best way to get from your house to the destination of your choice and home again. Once you consider all of the systems involved and the exchanges of information that have to take place (not to mention the distances that this data travels just to show you where the next McDonald’s is), it truly is a marvel of modern technology.

It’s surprising that there aren’t more problems with it.

Oh, but of course, we didn’t come here to talk about how great GPS works—this is a story about how a couple in a Mini Cooper driving in Arctic Norway got sent down a road that has been closed for over 50 years, stranding the vacationers on the Finnmark Plateau in winter in the Beskedes mountains.

As Norway’s The Local put it, the trail is only used by off-road bikes and quads, and “was in any case never used in winter.”

Thankfully, the tourists were all right, but had to be rescued by sled dog team, with a tow truck only venturing out to retrieve the stranded Mini the next day. The other good news is that the tourists seemed to be all right with their near-encounter with the dark side of a disney movie. 

“The two tourists took it all very well,” Freddy Eilertsen from Viking Rescue Service Alta told the local Nordlys newspaper. “We decided to salvage the car when it got light again the next day, and as a result the two were picked up by a dog team. It seemed like they had a good time.”

Dog Sledding

Near-death experiences are always mitigated by adding doggies
Image: United Nations Photo

News Source: The Local