I grew up on a farm that was about 5 miles from the nearest town and I could see the elevator from the roof of the barn. My first reaction to the puzzle was to walk to the town and buy a grape nehi and pour a packet of peanuts into it. I can think better when I am refreshed.

On a featureless pairie you do not need your exact location unless you are calling in an artillery strike.

The two primary methods of navigation are vector and relational. Vector is what you use on the ocean, e.g. travel X miles with a heading of XXX. Relational is what we use most days of our life, e.g. drive north on the road to the Sinclair station and turn west. You need to be able to combine both methods to be a good navigator.

World class orienteers have been interviewed to find out how they navigate. They primarily are map readers and use their compass only to verify location. When I am in the backcountry I probably look at my map hourly, but all of 2011 I used my compass once.

The ideal leg of an orienteering competition offers three route choices. The shortest is a vector route to a point of attack, then less than 100 meter vector to the control. The medium length route follows topographic features. The longest route follows handrails like roads or fences.

Mr. Shaw is correct that the GPS can do things that can be accomplished no other way, but do not ask me to abandon my topographic map.