Did you use and like Street Atlas - Sorry Suckers

I recently wanted to stop in a small town in Nebraska for the night. My TV nor smart phone recognized the town. I dusted off a 2006 Atlas and found the time.

I also find it easy to 'look at the big picture' sometimes.

Didn't know they were being discontinued so I may go buy a new one.

The GPS, even the phone provided you have internet access, is fine & dandy. However it is not difficult to get out of cellphone coverage. Having a stand alone onboard program like MS S&Ts is like having case of maps at your fingertips. When it has a GPS receiver better still. The navigator zooms in or out to easily see all options & change the route on the fly, internet access completely redundant.

mgirardo wrote:

I liked all the computer based applications for Maps and Routing, but they are cumbersome in the car and unsafe if no one else is in the car. The SmartPhone is small, fast and gives you a lot more details at your finger tips. Since we live on the East Coast, I have yet to drive through an area that didn't have internet access for long stretches.

...and using a small SmartPhone for navigation with no one else in the car is safe? :)

We traveled in the West and on secondary roads so internet isn't as reliable as in the East. It was great to be able to create a map for out in the boonies and re-work it to our taste and doing so without internet. Then for driving we just transferred it to the Garmin for easy glancing on the dash without fiddling with a SmartPhone.

dkreuzen wrote:
All you Garmin users should take the time to learn Basecamp. Once you figure it out it is easy and fast.

Wow, I didn't know what this was about so I checked it out. Wow, that's just what I have been looking for! I think I will download it and give it a try!

Thanks again for the tip!

Link to Basecamp.

dkreuzen wrote:
All you Garmin users should take the time to learn Basecamp. Once you figure it out it is easy and fast.

Dennis,

I have put a lot of time into both Basecamp and Homeport (the marine version). I know how to work Basecamp real well, but it will not allow for stops at request without massive arm waving and it has no capability at all to predict where a fuel stop should be planned. Plus, it will not run on my Win7/64 laptop.

For something that came from Garmin, it is amazingly incomplete for a traveler that needs information for planning.

Matt

mgirardo wrote:
Since we live on the East Coast, I have yet to drive through an area that didn't have internet access for long stretches.

-Michael

And there is where the problem is. I live in the West and prefer to travel "the roads less traveled". Google maps (and its internet connected brethren) have let me down countless times when signal was lost unexpectedly. Nope, I keep the Garmin, so I have offline maps, and a paper map, just in case the Garmin breaks.
Now if Google maps would have a feature so you could download say an entire state and save it on the phone, I might be more inclined to rely on it.

fj12ryder wrote:

stickdog wrote:
Anyone ever wonder how the pioneers made it across the continent without GPS and wifi?

A lot of them didn't. :)

Thank You,

My point exactly. This is not about maps.

It was a powerful planning tool so you could put a planned excursion together and know what to expect to EOD and Fuel locations way in advance.

I will miss the 21th century tool, but I am a child of the 20th and can still do what was required then.

Matt

All you Garmin users should take the time to learn Basecamp. Once you figure it out it is easy and fast.

I've used Delorme Topo maps and Street Atlas as well as MS Streets and Trips. I liked them all, but once I got a SmartPhone, there was no need for them. Between Google Maps and Waze, you don't really need anything else. You don't need active internet to use Google Maps, just download the map data offline. Google Maps app is constantly being updated adding new features all the time.

Waze is nice because it shows you what is coming up at the next exit or up the road without having to do anything. Since it is crowd sourced, it tells you what the cause of traffic is and how fast people in the traffic are moving. It also notifies you when there are police along the route.

I liked all the computer based applications for Maps and Routing, but they are cumbersome in the car and unsafe if no one else is in the car. The SmartPhone is small, fast and gives you a lot more details at your finger tips. Since we live on the East Coast, I have yet to drive through an area that didn't have internet access for long stretches.

-Michael

We, too, used the Delorme Street Atlas program on our computer. You don't need internet to plan your route and it can easily be planned the way YOU want to go, not the way a GPS wants to take you. You can transfer it to a GPS for heads up driving. For those not familiar with it, you missed out on an awesome product. We'll continue to use our older version. It's not made mistakes yet unlike our little GPS.

We traveled mostly in the western states and the Benchmark series of atlases are awesome. They give good road detail if you like to travel secondary roads, as we do. There's lot of public land information for scenic driving on gravel roads or boondocking in awesome places. They are simple to read with big print. They give many public campgrounds. If you travel a particular state a lot, it's worth the investment.

The state maps at Visitor Centers are o.k. if you do interstates or want a bigger picture but for detail, get a Benchmark atlas.

Nice knowing you, Delorme!