When all else fails, there’s amateur radio — and handwritten notes. Both ham radio and clear thinking helped rescue a mother and her son from a recent California camping trip gone wrong. While driving to the campsite in the Stanislaus National forest, the 49-year-old mother had the not-uncommon experience of GPS leading her and her 9-year-old son on a merry chase, sending her down a series of forest roads. Eventually the foliage got too dense for the GPS signals to penetrate, leaving the pair stranded in the forest with no guidance on how to get out.