Long Beach Navigation

Yesterday Ian and I were down in Long Beach for the day. Maybe we were just both particularly unobservant, but it seemed like the town was designed to be unnecessarily difficult to navigate in a car. A few of the smaller highlights:

• Most parking garages failed to clearly mark their existence from the street. Bicycle parking was, however, clearly marked from the street.
• Of the two parking garages that were clearly marked, one was closed and the other had an automatic ticket dispenser that wasn't working.
• One block past the 200 block was the 400 block. We were, of course, looking for the 300 block.

Now for the grand finale. On our way back, we just needed to get to the 710, then the rest would be easy. We even had a low detail atlas to help us. We saw signs for the 47, which would take us to a street that intersected with the 710. Great, we got on it... or at least we thought we did. Then we passed a sign that said turn here for the 47 North, which was what we wanted. Unfortunately, since we thought we were already on the 47, we missed the turn. We took some exit, planning to turn around. Unfortunately, what looked like it would put us back on whatever we had been on, it put us on some road that led us into a harbor area, with it's own network of roads. There was no place to turn around (legally) and all of the signs had to do with docks. There were no cars, nor signs of life anywhere. As we continued along the road continually had forks, and we tried to choose the ones that seemed like they would lead us back to civilization. They did no such thing.

Eventually we pulled a U-Turn when there was no divider in the road, and decided that was the best way to find our way out. About this time the gas light came on. To recap the situation, we don't really know where we are. We don't know how to get out. There is no one else around who we could possibly ask for help. Now, on top of that, we are low on gas. After some driving we came back to a traffic signal, and there was even a sign to get on the 47. However they didn't specify how to get on the 47 North. No, that would have been too straightforward. Our options were east or west. We picked west. I don't remember why anymore. Once we were on it, I checked the map again and realized that there is both a 47 East/West and a 47 North/South the intersect at a mutual point of termination. Fortunately, the 47 East seemed to intersect the 110, so we felt that we were probably ok. We went over a bridge, then decided we needed to deal with the gas situation, so got off at the next exit. There was no sign of gas anywhere, so we got back on 47. Unfortunately, the exit/entrance were set up differently than we were expecting, so now we were headed back over the bridge on the 47 East. Usually backtracking like this is just annoying. When you're running low on gas, however, it gets a little more exciting. Still, we thought that this route would take us back to the 47 North, and the route we had been planning on from the beginning. Fortunately, we were correct for the first time all night, and this brought us back to a gas station and a known route to the 710. The rest of the trip home went smoothly.

The moral of the story? Long Beach needs better signs and I need a better map of LA.