Originally Posted by
Tourist in MSN
If you are not used to working with maps very much, I can see that you may have good reason to prefer turn by turn. I worked with maps every day of my professional career, thus it is natural for me to prefer looking at maps. If you gave me a cue sheet to use, I most certainly would get lost. For touring, I rarely use my GPS to decide where the turns are, such as telling it I want to go to the Ikea store and letting it tell me where to turn. Have done it, but I often pick a different route anyway.
For most of my touring, turns just aren't that frequent. So I also prefer to have a big picture view of where I am going and even some potential alternatives to switch to on the fly. That might still be electronic (the laptop the night before) or it often could be a paper map. I set my GPS to record. Sometimes it has a track in it. Sometimes it doesn't and I am just using it to record the ride. Once I deviate from the route for any number of reasons I'm in the realm of device attempts at alternate instructions which have mixed utility. However, if there is a a route in my GPS device, then while not waiting for it to tell me to turn, I might instead have a rough countdown to the next major point. However, like I said often turns are just not that frequent...
For example, I can think of a day riding in Iowa. I intended to set off on the major road. However, if I found too much traffic or issues, I also knew already there were some smaller parallel roads I could switch to though those would likely be gravel. So as I started to ride, I dynamically changed my route. Now I had a track though my GPS kept noting to go back to the major road. I ignored it and proceeded on the big picture view I already had.
There just weren't that many turns that day and I dynamically adjusted things without a real issue. Having the larger picture view was helpful.