getting distance from site to site

With the antenna down, you can set your location by clicking "Near", then do a route to the site that you want.

I am a new user so I may need a little more infor than that. For example lets assume I want to get the distance from fanning spring fl to clear water fl and i am in douglasville ga. how do i do this? do i have to go to "view map" and set the location on fanning springs. then what do i do? thanks

Charley's method is pretty easy if you are looking for distances between cities, but if you want to know the distance between two locations within the same remote city, setting your location this way isn't precise enough. With the antenna down (or turned off with some units) just tap the screen (assume same for all units) to put it in map mode, zoom out enough to make dragging of the map speedy, and drag the map to where your remote location is centered. Then zoom in to be precise, touch the map at the point for your remote location until the arrow is exactly where you want it, and then hit the button to "set location". Now you can search for another location as if you were parked there.

Do we get a distance "as the crow flys" vs. the real drive distance and time?

I've had to set my nuvi 650 into "simulate" mode to get around the straight line estimates that are off most of the time.

dd

If you use the method described by bentbiker you will get a route that indicates actual distance and time.

You shouldn't need to change mode to simulate, but you do need to generate a route; if you look in your favorites from your virtual/remote location, it will show distances in the list that are "as the crow flies." However you choose the destination, you choose GO and because the antenna is down, it tells you to raise the antenna. Click the OK button but don't raise the antenna. Go to the lower right hand "Next Turn" box, press, and scroll to the last page to see the final mileage.

While I was not the OP, thanks to all for this helpful discussion - having my Nuvi for two months, I found the biggest frustration was my inability to use the Nuvi for for planning purposes (when I thought I was stuck with simulation of a route). Scrolling down to the last page of the turns and then looking at the map zoomed out does exactly what I want. Knowing the rough outlines of the map ahead of time allows me to avoid following some of the Nuvi's sometimes odd directions (getting off and back on the highway and such).

Thanks to all for all the great help I have gotten from this board.

Neal