Another near death by GPS story

fj12ryder wrote:
Many smaller roads and intersections won't fit on a larger scale road map, or atlas, just not enough space on the page.

If you're doing the western states and you'll be in one state for a few months or returning year after year, I'd highly recommend purchasing the Benchmark series of individual state atlases. They do show the smaller dirt tracks and they're very easy to read. They give the public campgrounds, national forests, BLM lands, etc. Many full-timers travel with these, especially those with 4x4s or those that like to boondock.

toedtoes wrote:

mr. ed wrote:
I don't know.My Garmin got me across the country from NC to AZ without a hitch snd has been invaluable in getting around Tucson since arriving. Only one time it told me a certain Walmart was on the left, when it was actually on the right. Other than that, it's been indispensable and is usually quite accurate in its directions.

I find them far more trustworthy on real roads. Once you go out where there are fire roads, etc., they are less trustworthy because the info on those fire roads, etc., isn't necessarily accurate in the mapping system and is subject to changes due to flooding, downed trees, fires, and closures, and so on.

Garmin put out a recent update. Hope you're keeping yours updated. Be informed the update may take a few hours to complete, depending on your Internet speed.:)

We've taken our RV quite a bit off-highway rock hounding. Our Garmin just about always shows all the obscure roads out there. It's maps are pretty comprehensive.

However ... the Garmin doesn't always show which road is best or safest to use ... because we can't tell it precisely where we want to go as a destination! In these situations we just use it to give us the name of the roads we're on and the compass direction as we drive so that we can then use a Benchmark atlas book to maybe/hopefully tell us really where we are in relation to the big picture.