Originally Posted by
andrewclaus
All I'll add to the great advice above is to be careful about the Google bike routes in some areas. Where I live it tries to route me on some dirt or gravel roads in an attempt to stay off busy highways. Sometimes a busy highway with a wide shoulder is preferable to a dirt or gravel back road, especially if you want to approach 100 mile days.
Google is pretty amazing for biking sometimes. It even accounts for hills in time estimates.
I'm have 90% excellent luck with Google Maps for biking, and 10% "You have GOT to be kidding me". :-) In several cases on a bike tour last summer, the locations of some notable tourist attractions were so far off that it tried to route us in entirely the wrong direction. In a couple others, it tried to put us on private roads, or in one case, up a vertical cliff face.
But overall, it's a useful tool, especially if you can check out the conditions of some roads ( shoulders or lack thereof, etc. ) with streetview.