GPS Maps and Routing
 

So I got a new toy, a Garmin Oregon 450 and have used it on my last mini tour. But I still have a hard time using it. Specifically using the routing functionality. Obviously for my nearly 200 mile trip I could not just enter my final destination or I'd be biking on the interstate all the way. I drew up my route on the computer using Garmin MapSource and uploaded it in a variety of formats.

- As a route. Well my route segments for a day were either to long or to complicated that by default the route had more than 50 navigation points. So the GPS would not calculate the route from it.

- A route with a max of 50 navigation points. Now the GPS can calculate a route but it's anything of what I want. It makes sure the navigation points are traversed but it may prefer other roads and causes me to zigzag and take undesirable roads.

- A track. This worked the best. I could overlay my map with the track and follow it. I did not get acoustic signals of a turn so I have to keep a close eye on the screen but I did get the remaining distance.

So the track option is somewhat workable but that means I need to plan out my whole exactly beforehand and doesn't give me much flexibility with my tour. I did try to use the routing feature a few times. It got me out of the starting town quite nicely but then wanted me to go on a gravel road. Since I didn't picked it it was sending me next on the interstate. Another time it send me to a level B (mud) road.

How do you use your GPS? Would the Garmin City Navigator North America do a better job of routing me while avoiding interstates, gravel roads and if possible busy highways? Or am I just expecting too much from technology? Even Google maps sends me repeatedly to gravel roads when I map a biking route with it.

BTW I'm using the free 4000MB Routable US map which is build from the Open Street Map project.

I'd go to the Garmin Forums website
https://forums.garmin.com/index.php
and start posting there. the deal is that of course in those forums, you get explicit feedback

for what its worth...
I use a Garmin 705, and pretty much have had the same type of issues.

that is to actually use the GPS more than just a cyclometer

routing... I use both US Topo and CN North America
the routing function is ok...
typically I use my iMac, using BaseCamp, and make tracks for whatever my routes on tour are going to be

on my 705 I have CN North America
then I pick and download the specific sheets for Topo
I'm using a 2GB card

There should be an option in your settings to set routing for bicycle. There is also should be an option to avoid unpaved roads that you may want to use.

Bu the best thing I have found is to use a real map and route short hops from town to town as opposed to final destination.

I bought a Garmin Vista HcX for my recent tour on the Lewis and Clark trail. I downloaded ACA's waypoints, thinking that would make the gps useful. Not so much. The ACA waypoints include every possible stop, bike shop, campground, restaurant, etc. and they have options for routes all on the same file, so you end up with WAY more information than you need or can use. They also use arcane names for their waypoints so you need a code book to interpret them.

I went through a couple of their routes, tried to determine exactly which roads I would take and which waypoints I would possibly need, and delete all the rest. It was very time-consuming but it made the information usable, after a fashion. However, I ended up turning the gps off while I was on the route, and only using it for miscellaneous things. The maps were eaiser to use.

One time the gps was helpful was when I wasn't on the ACA route. I had to get from the Amtrak station in Portland to my motel on the north end of town. I created my own route at home using Google maps (bicycling) and the Garmin software. It worked great. It was especially useful when I came upon a closed bridge in a very confusing part of town. I had entered the waypoint for the motel. As soon as I left my planned route, the HcX recalculated and created a new route that worked. It wasn't on as bike-friendly roads, but I got to my destination.

The gps was also useful for finding restaurants, car rental agencies, motels, and various things that came up on the trip. I used it just for fun sometimes, to check on elevation gain.

A couple of times it was counter-productive. There were several MUP paths on my route, and the Garmin mapping software doesn't recognize them. It tried to take me on the roads that paralleled the paths. I would have been better off ignoring it and simply using ACA maps. As my tour progressed I learned to do this. During the last week I hardly used the gps at all, until I got to Missoula and had to start figuring out a place to stay, and a place to rent a car to drive back to Portland. It was helpful, though the phone book was more helpful.

I'll probably take the gps on my next tour, but will do my own route planning and mapping, and will be aware of it's limitations.

I love to use a GPS for running, hiking, kayaking, and sailing, but on most tours I leave the GPS home. On an AC route I really do not find any added value to carrying a GPS. If the route is planned in advance a paper map if ine and a GPS isn't needed and if the route isn't planned in advance I'd still rather use a paper map.

Where I might be inclined to use a GPS is where I am not using roads at all.

On my eTrex Vista HCx I can set "bicycle" for the routing option and it'll try to avoid major highways wherever possible. This can also result in some odd routing decisions, e.g. in the middle of nowhere, going along a perfectly nice backroad which the GPS considers a highway, it wanted to get me off into this network of dirt tracks (which it obviously didn't know were unpaved). But all the same, the routing feature is useful in so many situations that I am willing to put up with the occasional quirk.

I've actually never done this. What I did was to load the entire City Navigator for North America onto my 2GB card. I haven't used the PC software since then - if I need routing, then I just ask the GPS to do it. This is partly because I just use Linux these days as my desktop, and can't be bothered farting around with firing up the Windows virtual machine.

What I did on my last tour was that I had paper map printouts (a very knowledgeable user on crazyguyonabike kindly plotted out a good route from St Louis to the Pacific, and I printed these out on normal paper with the route highlighted in yellow). Then I had the GPS on all day, usually not in routing mode but rather just to record trackpoints for later uploading to a google map on my journal, to show exactly where I went that day. I only used the GPS routing if I needed to go off-route to find a motel, shop, camping etc. Then if I needed to get a route, I would put in the nearest point which I could discern on my paper map (e.g. a road out of town, or the next little town on my route, if there was obviously just the one road going there then there wasn't much chance to lead me on any weird routes). This would usually get me back on track, and I was able to navigate strange towns with ease.

When using the routing, it was a question of looking ahead to check to see where the GPS wanted to take me, and then making common sense decisions to ignore its advice when it was obvious I was being taken the long way around. The GPS recalculates so quickly that it's actually quite fun to watch it realize I missed its recommended turn, and it frantically recalculates a new route to shepherd me back to its route. I actually have gotten very attached this little GPS! It's like a faithful companion who's always keen to help and tell you how to get to where you want to go. In the middle of nowhere, all alone, you still have a friend. Maybe I need psychiatric help.

See above - planning the route on paper printouts gives you the big overview, and also a backup in case the GPS stops working for some reason. So you can follow the paper map most of the time, but the GPS is there for short routing help - usually across towns. Or, if you come to a strange junction that isn't shown on the map etc.

Bicycle mode should take care of this - unless the map data you're using doesn't have information about what types of roads these are. That's a possibility - the GPS can only make decisions as good as the data it's working with. City Navigator usually has a pretty good idea of what is a highway.

This is a very interesting question, and I'd like to experiment with it myself! I have City Navigator, but I'd like to try the free alternatives.

Thanks for that link - I wasn't aware that they had progressed so far with the free maps, to the point where they could cover the whole country. I wonder how comprehensive it is. The whole of North America for City Navigator fits on a 2GB card, so I wonder what additional data this file has that it takes up 4GB? That's twice as large! Actually City Navigator doesn't even use up the whole 2GB, I have a good 400MB left over for storing my trackpoints. Does the free map have a POI (Points of Interest) database?

Thanks!

Neil