Before GPS, before MapQuest, before smartphones, you navigated with a folded paper map that was impossible to refold correctly. If you missed your exit, you were on an adventure now.
My dad would pull into a gas station and ask for directions. The attendant would say things like 'go past the old Johnson farm and turn left where the Dairy Queen used to be.' These were the directions. This was the system.
Road trips meant someone in the passenger seat with an atlas open on their lap, squinting at tiny road numbers. 'I think we turn in about... maybe two inches?' Distances were measured in inches on the page.