A friend and I recently took a weekend trip out of town. Our destination was 80 miles away, and planned to bike 40 miles to a state park, where we were supposed to get picked up by friends the next morning for time constraints. Unfortunately, the weekend constraint meant we took off Friday afternoon, and after we took a 10 mile unintentional detour in the wrong direction, it was dark, and we were biking on fairly busy roads with small or no shoulders. To make it worse, my friend ended up running over a piece of shrapnel that tore a 1/2 cm gash in his Pasela TGs. Thanks to the grace of strangers, we got a ride to the park anyways, but the whole ordeal was kind of scary.

Anyhow, one of many lessons learned is that Google bicycling directions are not the greatest. They send you on busy highways with barely any shoulder, and many of the county roads suggested are actually private gated roads. Any recommendations on how to get good directions for such a tour? I've heard mixed reviews on GPS devices; any opinons?