Amy Scherer Honigs never needs to ask for directions when she drives the highways and byways of Minnesota and surrounding states. But she does stop when confronted by a firearm.

"I pulled down this road and ended up in someone's farmyard, and this guy pulls out a shotgun," she recalls of a trip five years ago to Marathon County, Wis.

She quickly but calmly explained that she was simply mapping a public road for her job. He replied that he and his double-barreled friend didn't take kindly to being located and that she had best go.

Scherer Honigs recounts the episode: "I said, 'We'll be happy to back up and leave as soon as you move the pickup truck that's blocking us in.'"

Such incidents come with the territory when your job is to cover, well, the whole territory.

Scherer Honigs and her co-worker, Don Jaenisch, are two of more than 1,000 geographic analysts worldwide who drive millions of miles each year to ensure that maps used online and on GPS systems reflect reality. They all work for NAVTEQ, which provides mapping data for everyone from BMW and Garmin to Yahoo! and MapQuest.

From their Edina base -- one of 190 NAVTEQ offices in 39 countries -- Scherer Honigs and Jaenisch venture out in a high-tech SUV, logging more than 25,000 miles a year. They have driven the streets of downtown Minneapolis, and they have journeyed to South Dakota to find a remote home on the Missouri River whose owner wanted what essentially is an extended driveway added to the map -- and they have hit just about every site in between.

"A lot of people think we're storm chasers," Scherer Honigs says.

That's because their white vehicle has a GPS antenna on top. Other NAVTEQ vehicles, one of which Scherer Honigs and Jaenisch will get to use for a few weeks this summer, look even more high-tech with souped-up GPS and a six-camera array housed in a clear bubble on the roof.

They share driving duties equally, but on a recent day. As they drive along, Jaenisch calls out what he's seeing.

"1528, 1600," he says, as he notes building addresses on Marshall Street in northeast Minneapolis. "Speed, 30."

We're on a demo run to see if the recent demolition of the Lowry Avenue bridge is reflected accurately in the NAVTEQ database. As he shares his observations, Scherer Honigs follows along on a large flat-screen monitor that shows their driving progress in real time on an overhead display of the city. Using a pen tablet to navigate the screen, she touches icons that automatically add notations to the digital map, such as speed changes and turn lanes, using a proprietary computer program called Atlas.

"Satellite images can't give us info like lane markings, turn restrictions and addresses," Scherer Honigs says.

A forward-facing camera records the street view of their route so they can check the video if any discrepancies come up once they get back to the office.

"I've gotten to where I know a lot of the areas in the Twin Cities from so much driving around," Jaenisch says.

After they drive a route, document it and file their updates, it can take several months for users to see the changes in a NAVTEQ-powered map. Because roads are always being modified and built, Scherer Honigs says, "Our job is pretty much guaranteed."

So are quizzical stares and a few honking horns from passersby, judging from the recent downtown excursion. Curious police and housing developers often pull them over to ask what they're doing. One officer even stopped Scherer Honigs to ask for her autograph on a speeding ticket -- the only moving violation for the pair in a combined 19 years for NAVTEQ.

Geographic analysts around the world have animal stories from the road -- run-ins with giraffes, camels, millions of bumblebees (from an overturned semitrailer truck). Jaenisch once was out with a visiting mapper who was determined to see a bison while he was in the Upper Midwest, but they never spotted one. As soon as the guy left to return to Chicago, Jaenisch happened upon a whole herd.

But it was during a mapping mission in Mexico that he suddenly felt as if the joke were on him. The expedition ground to a halt when some chickens ambled in front of the vehicle.

Jaenisch said with a laugh: "I saw the chicken cross the road, but I never did find out why."

At least he didn't have to ask the way.

"We always know where we're going," Scherer Honigs says.

Randy A. Salas • 612-673-4542