mev

I am not a newbie to touring - but have experimented more recently with creating and downloading routes to a device (Edge 540) and having it provide cues for turns.

Some background and context:
1. For most of the touring I do, I really don't need turn by turn directions. For much of my touring, there is a limited set of route choices - I check my map in the morning - note a few waypoints (sometimes only one if I am on the same US highway the entire day as happens in Western US).
2. I am eight days into a tour that started in Washington DC and so far has crossed a few large urban areas including:
- leaving Washington DC
- crossing Baltimore
- crossing Philadelphia
- Trenton NJ to Staten Island to Manhattan and out Long Island
While a more typical check the maps approach could work - I also figured this would be good situation to play around with these tools.
3. My general riding preferences:
- I am often looking for a relatively direct route and am willing to trade off some amount of "pleasant" riding. There is a boundary where things become unsafe so have to watch that but OK to be on sometimes busy roads.
- I definitely prefer paved routes even in comparison with crushed limestone paths
- Less climbing is better

Now, some experiences and things I've found and tried:
1. Using the basic routing inside my 540 doesn't match my preference. Often picks rather roundabout choices. Where it can be helpful is bringing up "search" and finding businesses of different types.
2. Komoot lets me route to mostly stay on pavement. RideWithGPS was tougher to do and was more likely to default to pleasant routes.
3. None of the routing across Philadelphia seemed to get a route that seemed to work for me. I ended up using the Adventure Cycling Delmarva route which worked well into center of Philly (except for short section wrong way on one way street and sending me onto walk your bike paths through Penn.
4. I was more pleased with Komoot both getting me into and out of Manhattan. Routing was relatively direct, occasionally busy but still reasonable. Komoot did try to send me across a closed bridge in Maryland that MDOT told me had been closed for a while.
5. RideWithGPS was tedious in fixing up the route with heat map in a dense urban area but with fewer road choices might be OK.

Overall it does seem like some situationally dependent issues (e.g. Philly vs. NYC gave different impressions to me of how well tools worked). I also expect once I am past some of the densest urban areas most any of these will work better.

Still experimenting as my trip goes along...

Steve B.

A cross country cycling couple who's YT series I watched, used Kamoots all the time displaying on a bar mounted iPhone, that was powered by a battery bank. They also used this across France. Interestingly, the women used a Garmin but left TBT and directions to her husband with Kamoots. I can see where RWGPS gets funky, their algorithm for routing often takes me on about every side street possible if I use Cycling as the choice, annoyingly at times. Thus I often use Driving, which can then route me on roads I would not generally choose. Trying to have the actual Garmin device pick a route is a complete crap shoot and often terrible. I think they use their Popularity Routing (needs wifi or cell service to access that), but I never let the device pick a route. I actually have had luck using the cycling routing on Google Maps and then check it in earth view for shoulders, then would draw into RWGPS to get a TBT file, that has worked a number of times. I should try Kamoots.

Tourist in MSN

My last solo tour that was not on a specific known bike friendly route was in 2019. I would often in the evening look at the paper map, look at my Garmin for where campgrounds were, might also check for grocery store locations some days too, and then decide my destination. (A couple hundred miles of my tour were a known food desert where if you miss the one or two stores, you won't be able to buy food for over a week.)

First, I would try my Garmin routing. I use a general recreation GPS, not a cycling specific one, I can select different "activities" and I generally used "tour cycling".

If that looked like a route I did not want, I would check Komoot with minimal elevation preference. That sometimes gave me crazy routing which I would try to fix with some well placed waypoints. I did not have a local sim card, thus could only use Komoot where I had wifi, so sometimes could not use it for several consecutive days.

And if that did not look good, I would try Maps.Me on my android phone, using automotive routing. (I loaded all the basemaps I would need at home before my trip, so could use it off-line)

And I would typically pick one of those. I did not have the means to put a non-Garmin route into my Garmin from my phone or paper map, but I could pick some waypoints from the other routing options and create waypoints on my Garmin.

And a few times, the paper map gave me a better route than the electronic options. Often this was because the electronic options appeared to choose federal or state (or provincial) roads over local roads, even if the local roads were much shorter and a good road. Thus, a few times I did not use any of the electronic options.

Only once did my routing plans put me on a very busy highway with almost no shoulder. Took the next exit and then tried to figure out how to recover from that with new routing on the fly.

That has pretty much worked for me in the past.

John N

I create my routes in advance (which has its own definite downsides) so I get to go on the roads I want. I also prefer more pleasant (and/or safer) roads even if a bit longer. Therefore, I have more turns but I do not mind. Do what works best for you.

Tourist in MSN

That was my plan for my last tour before Covid, I put together the route in Mapsource. Included a couple alternative options in case I was ahead of schedule or behind since I would have to fly home again on a certain date.

Day two I had already deviated from my plan in a major way. And later in my trip, when I saw five consecutive days of rain in the forecast, I decided to sleep indoors for three nights during that period at a hostel, that was another major deviation from my original plan.

Now that I am retired, I do not have to schedule all my vacations to be X number of days, now I have much more schedule flexibility. But if flying I am still bound to certain end dates.

Yan 

I use Google Maps bicycle routing on a computer. I find it far better than Garmin's auto routing. Google Maps also has a more user friendly interface for making adjustments.

Google Maps routes can be converted to .gpx files which can then be loaded onto Garmin devices as courses.