Mistook a dried-up creek bed for a trail near Moab, GPS lied twice

Last month I was on the Poison Spider loop outside Moab and cut off the main path to chase a shortcut my GPS showed. Turned out that creek bed hadn't seen water in years, and the sand swallowed my boots for a solid mile before I clued in. Spent 40 extra minutes backtracking with sun beating down, and my water ran low enough that I rationed the last liter. The map on my phone kept redrawing the route, which made it worse, so I finally just walked toward the highway noise. Has anyone else had a GPS route steer them into a vanished wash, and do you trust offline topo over phone apps now?

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