When was the last time you got lost/stranded?
I did yesterday! See my answer...

I was on my way to Cincinnati, but had to get on 275 East to get to where i was going...i never found it, but i did get to Cincy. I went straight through 75 until i started toward Kentucky, so i got off there and took a detour(no, i din't quite know where i was going exactly, Lol).

So i somehow found 71 North and took it to see if i could recognize something familiar to get home...never did. I ended up 50 miles from Columbus, car started jerking a little while driving on the highway, so i had to pull over on the sholder 3 times..the third time, my car stalled and died(good thing i had minutes on my phone!)

About 30 minutes after, a highway trooper came up behind me and asked what was going on, i explained, he took me to the nearest gas station where i waited 8 hours to get picked up to go home.

I left home at 6am, didn't get home until 7:30 pm!!
(yes, got my car back same time too..working too)
And i had been up all night before leaving(30 hours, no sleep)I was stuck in Wilmington, in case you're wondering lol.

Get AAA TODAY ... they offer free maps and travel tour-logs to go along with their towing and roadside assistance ... the first time you use it, it pays for itself

Glad you got back to "home".

Get maps and/or a GPS.

Use mapquest newbie driver.

I read your story and funny how last place I got stranded at was also in Ohio! I am not from Ohio. I was on a roadtrip driving with my best friend driving from Iowa to s Carolina when the alternator on the car went out. This was about 11pm at night, so of course, no car repair shops were open and we had no road side assistance either. So we slept in the back of the truck until morning until we could get fixed and on our way. We were stranded for 12 hrs. But I tell ya what, the people of Ohio were the nicest ever. Here are a couple pics of the truck in the repair shop.

We made a mistake last week when leaving our motel, by assuming that we had to continue the same direction we were going to reach our turn off, but I looked at the map to choose where to have lunch and discovered our mistake within about 20 minutes. We backtracked and it all worked out OK.

I read a blog where one person said that she took three days to make what is usually a 20 minute trip for her, but she is also a recently released mental patient, so I think there was more to that story.

What was wrong with the car?? Out of gas?
Did you have any maps?
And, I have had that type of thing happen twice. I called the Assistance Line (cars still had factory guarantee) and they were towed in and fixed at no cost. But I had to stay in a motel overnight in one case.