Trip Planning and GPS Software

As long as you stick to the roads the map shows you're good. But you sure can't zoom in on those paper maps like you can the electronic ones. :) The roads I like usually aren't on the standard road maps.

Horizon170 wrote:
I don't use/trust the electronic stuff to get from point A to point B.
Truckers road map has been good for us the last 30+ years. I update every 2 years.

That's like preferring a typewriter over a word processor. You can do a lot of various tasks with that "electronic stuff"

I don't use/trust the electronic stuff to get from point A to point B.
Truckers road map has been good for us the last 30+ years. I update every 2 years.

Tim,

Another Tim here from north Dallas, TX.

When we started RVing in 2003, I did trip planning using Microsoft Streets & Trips. Here is the trip plan for our first trip in 2003.



As we drove, I would follow the trip plan with the laptop on a table installed between the driver and passenger seat. I had a yellow GPS module on the dash which fed into S&T on the laptop.



If we changed the route during the drive, which happened a LOT, I updated at the end of the day so that we would have an accurate record of where we went.

We now have a different RV, a different laptop, no table, and a different version of S&T.

Now I still plan the trip Using MS S&T, but now I manually load it one day at a time into a windshield mounted Garmin. If we make unplanned side trips my phone does pretty well at finding things. I still make trip updates at the end of the day.

I have used this process for 14 years and it still works for me.

Tim

I'm an avid motorcyclist. I like to plan scenic back roads routes with lots of twisty roads and great scenery. To that end, I stumbled upon a website that allows me to easily plan my trips and then do the file export in a choice of several formats or directly to a short list of devices. I export as KML files and then load that file into my phone and open with LocusMaps Pro app for voice guided, turn by turn navigation and statistics tracking.

MotoGoLoco uses google maps and there's nothing in there that will allow you to see or avoid restricted roads (height/weight) etc.

MotoGoLoco Trip Planning

Mapsource is still available, but the new name is BaseCamp. Same program, just updated and renamed.

I agree Matt
Doesn't Google Maps understand RV'ers would pay to use a good map program, instead of just free google map.

I still use Garmin Mapsource to load my GPS for my motorcycle trips. It was expensive, but works. I will figure out my routes on google map and fine tune it, then plot it on mapsource. Then; connect the GPS to the computer and shove the plan over.

I'm another one that is completely disappointed with the Garmin/Delorme thing. I had been doing the *.gpx to get the plan to the drivers GPS, but that does suck. Basecamp sucks for a planning app even on a big screen. With Delorme SA, I could lay out a plan months ahead and include the End of Day, fuel stops and include the expected time for attractions along the planned route.

There is nothing I have found to replace SA. What I do now is plan on SA. Sometimes I do the *.gpx to pass to the Drivers little GPS (the person sitting in the right seat gets to be navigator) and has the laptop and the smartphone watching for traffic as the Garmin traffic receiver proved worthless even before it died and stopped the GPS from working. (The traffic receiver got disconnected and now the GPS works as well as it ever did.

It would be so simple for either Garmin or Google to make up a package to do what we would like, but I guess the market for a real traveler's navigation and planning package just does not have any appeal to marketing. I really wish Google would grab this ball. Their maps are more up to date and the traffic note on my phone seem to be pretty good. I can't even imagine the other features that they could incorporate.

Matt

I use Street Atlas for trip planning, then map out the same route in BaseCamp for subsequent transfer to my GPS. BaseCamp sucks for actual planning. Too many roads disappear when you zoom out.

Don't expect Street Atlas to reappear. Useful software is being dropped so you will be forced to "apps" instead. Don't like it? I sure don't since I like the large screen to work with. Well, that and the fact I don't have a smart phone. :)