Route planners

Matt_Colie wrote:
I should start this by allowing that much of my life I have had Navigator next to my name. That has instilled habits that I have no interest in losing.

When we travel (we are travelers, not campers), we usually have two GPS running, a standalone for the driver with the day's route programmed in before getting underway, and a laptop running Street Atlas. If you count the smartphone, maybe three. As we travel, the navigator can work the traveling internet (when we have it), and if something interesting shows up, maybe we will divert to it. Needless to say, on more than single occasion, the day's plan has gone out the window with a single road sign. That is how we found the The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. We didn't know about it and it was not in our plan.

We have had very limited success with anything on-line. Even with the 4G repeater and Verizon for a carrier, we still end up without a usable connection during some driving days. When I once tried an on-line planner, the only thing we could do was plan the day and hope that when a change was desired or forced on us, we could get a connection or work it through with the standalone.

What I still want is a planner that you can put in a start and end and it will tell you about points of interest along the way and do this with a value of by miles of diversion. For example, if you are within 50 miles of of the Gilmore Collection (cars-Hickory Corners MI), The Museum of the Rockies (dinosaurs and more-Bozeman MT), the Naval Air Museum (naval flight-Pensacola FL) or the Union Pacific Museum (railroad/no rolling stock-Council Bluffs IA), or even 100 miles of The Airforce Museum (aircraft-Dayton OH) or the Henry Ford/Greenfield complex (Dearborn MI), the package should set a flag so you don't drive right on by.

Matt