Ok, so.
I had a 93 Cadillac STS and in 2004 my Girlfriend and I where really into taking “road trips”.
The rules were simple. No highways, get lost.
We/I drove so many back country roads within 2-3 hours of Wash. DC that it got to a point in which I couldn’t get lost anymore. All in the middle of the night with a bottle of wine and tons of music.
On one occasion I had to be in Manhattan for a show the next day and we decided to leave Gaithersburg MD around midnight. I still have no idea what roads we took but we never went on a road that was more than one lane in each direction, not until the very end. The only toll I paid was at the Lincoln Tunnel. We traversed all of Pennsylvania and most of New Jersey by instinct alone. Avoiding any and all major roads. It was insane. Drive for 30 minutes or more on some winding mountain road and coming to and intersection with no real direction and trying to decide if I should go “Left or Right”. Go left, drive for another 45 minutes and go right at the next. This went on for hours and hours in pitch black empty country roads. As the sun rose I saw that we were approaching an overpass. Something hit me and I said “We need to take this road”. I dropped into the highway and within 4-5 miles we were going through the tunnel. Insane trip.
We did the same thing on a “Road Trip to Niagara Falls”.
Blind luck and gut instincts.