Heard Around the West

THE WEST

very day, about 20 carloads of befuddled-looking travelers straggle down the roads of a small rural subdivision on the Idaho-Wyoming border, much to the locals’ annoyance. “Is this Yellowstone National Park?” the drivers plaintively ask. Unfortunately, no; Yellowstone is about two hours away. It seems one bad app can spoil a whole getaway. If you hit the red pin instead of the green pine tree icon on your iPhone’s Apple Maps app,, you will be sorry: “Hundreds of people are going to Yellowstone and finding out it’s a mailbox,” said Suzanne Arden, a resident. Her neighbor, Carol Gregory, tried to help by painting some rocks yellow at the subdivision’s entrance and posting a sign telling tourists they’d been led astray. Gregory said she’d notified Apple of the problem several times, but the app remained unchanged in late August. She did succeed in getting a sympathetic response from a customer rep named Vivian: “I completely get where you’re coming from,” Vivian said. “That’s something I definitely would want to get taken care of. If I was going to Yellowstone, I would not want to show up at your doorstep.” Meanwhile, Eugenio Bautista from Chicago was among the many hapless wanderers this summer who found himself in a housing development somewhere outside of Driggs, Idaho. There he found pleasant homes, but not a geyser in sight — not even a friendly elk or bison to photograph. “This is not it,” he concluded. “And now we wasted two hours already.”