meetups

If you want to meet some new people, or do things with people who have the same interests as you, meetup.com is a great site to look at.  I've joined LOTS of groups.  I've only been to three meetups so far although I've been a member of most groups for over a year now.  The biggest issue, imo, is that most of the ones I'm interested in are an hour away.  Usually they're in an area that I'm unfamiliar with.  I used to drive all over the place without anxiety about knowing where I was (and this was before GPS!)  Now I really don't like driving to unfamiliar places at night.  It doesn't help that the first time I went to a meetup no one else showed up.  So that's always a concern.  And the next two times I went, I got lost, despite having GPS.  (It seems that you have to update those things yourself!)  Once I finally found the meetups I had a nice time, but it hasn't done much for my motivation.  And I didn't meet people that I exchanged information with to keep in contact.  Guess I need to go more than twice for that.
Has anyone tried meetup & had great success?  Hearing about that might make me more motivated.