On the map. Almost.

The street that serves our little eight-home (soon to be nine) subdivision doesn’t show up on any Internet or GPS map, which makes things a little tricky for visiting friends and relatives and for people making deliveries.

That’s because it hadn’t been accepted into the county road network. We were afraid that would prevent the county from picking up our ice storm debris last year, but it got picked up after it became clear that the FEMA money the county received was based on everyone’s debris – not just the folks on dedicated county roads.

That non-official road status meant we had to have rural mailboxes down at the end of our road, where it joins the official county road.

We opted, instead, to rent a post office box in the interest of security.

I heard a rumor earlier this week that our road had finally been accepted by the county and I confirmed it with the Postmistress this morning. As of March 29, we’ve been living on a bona fide county-maintained road. That means we can put up a mailbox in front of our house and get residential mail delivery.

But now that we can have it, I’m not so sure I want it. The U.S. Postal Service is considering eliminating Saturday mail delivery, but they’ll continue to put mail in post office boxes on Saturdays. And it means changing our address on a dozen or so accounts and lists.  So I think we’ll keep using the P.O. box address at least until the rent on it comes due later this year.

But our road should start showing up on Google Maps and in GPS map updates in the next year or so.