Originally Posted by Doug64

I think electronic mapping tools takes a lot of the adventure out of touring, but I use them. However, I use them "with a grain of salt". I also like paper maps for the same reasons listed above.

I think we were using our phone's GPS with a map that was downloaded earlier when we could connect to wifi. We were in the Czech Republic and had limited phone data, and that is a good way to go. It was getting late, raining, and we were trying to get to a Decathlon store before it closed. We took a route that started on pavement, turned to gravel, and then to dirt. That was not the frustrating part. The route took us to the base of a set of stairs that led to the road we wanted to connect with, which was about 75' above us. We should have used 2 grains of salt on this one. There are a lot of similar stories like this out there.

Pushing our loaded bikes up these stairs to the road was a challenge, but the wide steps made it easier.