Road Trip Planning App or Website (1 Viewer)

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Joined
Mar 20, 2011
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Location
Arlington, Texas
Hello,

I thoroughly enjoy the trip planning part of trips. I love creating endless lists of supplies to pack for the trip, lists of the prepared food to bring, lists of hikes to do in parks, list of points of interests to see if time allows.... I sometimes have created lists of lists but im trying to stop that. I suppose its my married and fatherhood version of pre-gaming in college before we would hit the bars.

with that said, what is everyone using for thier route planning?

I have dozens of My Maps on my google account set up that I set waypoints and driving routes. then i have POI marked of cool places I may or may not stop at.

I also use ALLTrails on the phone for our hikes which is excellent (well worth the $99 lifetime subscription to download maps for those times when we are out of cell service to see where we are).

I have found as my overland trips have gotten longer (3 weeks for our upcoming trip) that the My Maps limits my waypoints for a given map. Im going to look at Roadtrippers website, but looking for any other good apps or websites.

thanks
 
After 2 hours of playing around with the roadtrippers website, it seems that they only allow up to 7 waypoints on a trip with the free account. the paid subscription allows 150 waypoints, but cost $30/yr.

I did find a single trip loophole. They set you up with a 32 waypoint Route 66 trip. I deleted all the waypoints and then was able to add in 18 waypoints of my own for my upcoming Aucgust trip. I guess this will do for now. going to keep playing around with this and use it for my trip then see if its worth the $30/yr.
 
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I have used mymaps for years, but they limit your POI and limit number of waypoints in each map you create.
It's good for short trips, but can't suffice on my multi week trips
 
I have used mymaps for years, but they limit your POI and limit number of waypoints in each map you create.
It's good for short trips, but can't suffice on my multi week trips
Forgive me if you know this already, but you can add layers in Google Maps. Each layer has a waypoint limit, but I have never reached a layer limit. It's only really good for on road travel.
I've been playing with gaiagps both on a browser and on Android for off road navigation. It's pretty OK for what it is, but they are still working out bugs. I have not actually used it yet in a vehicle, but it looks promising. Many overlanders like it FWIW.
 
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@jonheld thanks for the lead on gaiagps

Mymaps does limit you to 10 layers. but I too rarely ever reach that limit.

I completely agree that its only good for on road travel. things get complicated when i am taking trails between waypoints. One section of my upcoming trip we are taking the Rimrocker trail in Colorado to go from the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park to Arches National Park, and its so difficult to properly make this happen on a map.

for my upcoming trip I am using individual layers for the major stops. then in each layer i have the little in between things. I make the mymaps work, but I would love for there to be a better program out there. I will check out gaiagps.

Ill post up my thoughts and findings when i dig into it a bit.
 
@jonheld thanks for the lead on gaiagps

Mymaps does limit you to 10 layers. but I too rarely ever reach that limit.

I completely agree that its only good for on road travel. things get complicated when i am taking trails between waypoints. One section of my upcoming trip we are taking the Rimrocker trail in Colorado to go from the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park to Arches National Park, and its so difficult to properly make this happen on a map.

for my upcoming trip I am using individual layers for the major stops. then in each layer i have the little in between things. I make the mymaps work, but I would love for there to be a better program out there. I will check out gaiagps.

Ill post up my thoughts and findings when i dig into it a bit.
GAIAGPS was designed for apple products, but they have ported all functionality over to the Android app. However, they limit the functionality of the browser (gaiagps.com) which I find maddining. I would much rather sit at my desk with a 27" monitor and a mouse and completely plan things out as opposed to using a phone or a tablet. I have had several conversations with their application support person regarding this. We'll see where it goes.
If you know of a product that is better, please share your thoughts.
 
Im currently on a ship (work) so I dont have the ability to download the android version on my phone, so i have played around with only the desktop version. I can definitely see your frustrations. extremely limited and hard to work with on the desktop.

since most of all of my planning occurs when at work at a desktop I dont think this is the ideal platform for me.

I found some great reviews for 'Caltopo'. its desktop only and you can save your files to a cloud in .gpx then download it onto your phone and run it in acrobat on an android.

unfortunately its just a map and your phones gps position can show you where you are, but there is no recording or tracking.

so far it is easy to use on the desktop. it looks to be as easy and basic or as indepth and detailed as you want.

this is all based on only 2 hours of gaiagps and maybe 1-2 hours playing with caltopo. much more investigating with both will occur.
 
I have used Gaiagps on Android. I agree that it is definitely lacking. Downloads are slow and the inability to select large geographic areas in high detail is frustrating. They claim they are working hard on the Android and IOS versions.

Backcountry Navigator is coming out with a new version (kickstarter). I haven't messed around with it.
 
I had a chance to actually use GAIAGPS during an off road event in July. I downloaded all maps prior to the event and was able to track my progress, but the map display doesn't update correctly. It doesn't give you a real time "breadcrumb" trail like most other products out there. You have to force the map to update to display an active track. Very underwhelming.
I contacted the developer regarding this and it seems many others are complaining about the same issue, along with a host of others. I think these folks have a lot of work to do before this becomes a real product.

Maprica looks like a decent product, but not sure how to import maps.
GeoTracker is another one that I'm starting to play with.

Most of these apps are pretty disappointing.
 

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