In the GPS era...

... do people still rely on paper maps?

When we (I) got ready to put together our invitation packets, we thought it would be helpful to include a map of general venue location with directions "from the north" and "from the south", since the majority of guests would be coming from those directions.

No problem. I followed this awesome tutorial. I got on Google maps, found a good view of the general area, and about an hour later I had a cute little map complete with major roads, the venue and directions.

Then after we reserved a block of rooms at a nearby hotel (actually THE nearby hotel - not a lot of options on that side of town) I made another map, this time showing the route from the hotel to the venue.

I was so proud of my little maps. Mr. Calico approved them (after I enlarged the text a bit). I printed them out on our recycled paper and off they went with the invitations. About a week later, I got an interesting text message from Sis Calico's best friend.

One of the roads on the map doesn't exist.

This has induced a mild amount of panic. It's not a major road on the map, but it is the road that connects (or was supposed to connect) the hotel area back to the main highway nearby. Apparently, it's there, but there are no signs with the name that's on the maps I made... it's just a road.

This isn't the first time an Internet map has led me astray. I used to work as an ESL/Spanish teacher for a company here in Indy that sent me to various homes and offices around the area. The receptionist always provided a Yahoo! Map to the location any time there was a new class. I was once sent up to Kokomo with a map that led me to a mausoleum. Creepy. And no one there wanted to learn Spanish.

That was why I went with GoogleMaps instead. Of course, that doesn't seem to help in this case.

The directions provided on the hotel map are only from the venue to the hotel and in order to get to the hotel, the guests would have to pass through that area with the unnamed street. So now my question is this: Should I contact all of our guests to provide an updated map? Or should we assume that the guests who are staying at that hotel will figure it out or be using their own GPS anyway?