GPS directions and routes

[NEWHD74FAN]

GPS navigator is a boon for many, and a curse ONLY if you trust it blindly on the fly. I use my Tom Tom ONE low tech early model, my gal uses Tom Tom 130S w/ street names (she wanted it so I got it)...the fact that after she used mine once and immediately picked up how to use it so easily, sold me and maintains decorum in the cockpit.

I use it to plan my route and memorize text of all the turn by turn street names (and also carry a paper map with the overall plan). If you are a member of AAA, they offer Travel Tix, which is a flip chart showing the entire route, if you give them a few weeks to plan your long trip flip chart ahead of time. Do take the time to use this service if your a memeber, it's free and tells you places of interest, discounted hotel, areas of interest and such. If you are going to a National Park, don't forget to register if you are 65 for your free group pass, FREE is GOOD! Don't know how much longer that will last in these economic times, but as tax payers, we paid for it many times over...!

 

[Mainah]

I have a TOMTOM and use a free program called TYRE. It used google map and allows me to create the route I want. Then save it to my GPS as a itenary. But I also agree having a paper map of the area is a great thing too.

Thanks for the heads up about TYRE. I have a Tom Tom because I want to be able to feed the audio to my radio to get the voice prompts and the Tom Tom was the only one in the store that did that. I never liked the itinerary feature, but using TYRE it is super easy to create all kinds of routes and download to the GPS.

 

[horizonchaser]

I have a Garmin Quest 2. It is an older version but I have also bought the Lifetime Map updates which enables be to get updates every three months. But what I really want to emphasize is the maps that get downloaded on our computer from these devices. I can zoom in and get every street on my route. Try getting THAT from a standard road map. I can't tell you how many times when I am aimlessly riding around and I see a road and wonder where it goes and then go home, open up Mapsource (or in my case RoadTrip) and satisfy my curiosity by looking up that particular road.