Which way do I go?

As I mentioned previously, Doug and I rented a car, and Doug is doing the driving. This makes me map girl and navigator by default.
I am not completely useless with maps, but I would never go so far as to say that I'm GOOD with them. However I like to think that I make up for the deficiency in my map reading skills with my sign spotting skills. This is often half the battle.
We got our car and drove down to the coast a few days ago. Highway navigation went relatively smoothly, and found a new appreciation for turnabouts. Sometimes it is very nice to be able to just drive in a circle for a few minutes while you decipher signs and figure out which turn off it is that you actually want.
Things became slightly more hairy when we got to town. Roads are notoriously curvy and seem to change names every other block. These names are posted subtly on the sides of buildings. The upside to this is that there's minimal sign congestion on road ways -- lovely. The downside is that I'm constantly asking, "What street IS this?!"
It does not help that we managed to buy the biggest map EVER. Notice in the picture below that it is actually larger than the hood of the car, thus wider than my arm span. Imagine trying to refold that thing in the car without blocking Doug's view while he drives . . . yeah, it doesn't work. A few times, I have ended up with the thing folded up over my head so I can get to where the small city map is on the other side. It's quite a sight.



The roads also have a way of down-sizing quickly from a main road to an alleyway. Doug though is a superb driver (minus one small hillside incident) and manages to scrape by, figuratively speaking of course.