2011.10, routing and Forest Roads - Initial impression compared to earlier maps

Greetings,

I imagine that this topic will be of use (and interest) to less than 1% of POI Factory folks. Here goes:

Many of the Forest Roads around Flagstaff reopened yesterday after being closed for winter snow and spring mud, so I took the nuvi with the new 2011.10 map out for a trip to a distant hiking trailhead I had saved as a Favorite.

I was quite surprised with the suggested routing to the trailhead. Past maps had pretty much directed me along the better quality forest roads while 2011.10 chose a route with two "detours" on some pretty bad roads. I avoided the chosen route and Karen recalculated my route to the desired trailhead on the all-weather roads I usually choose. Some day I may have to try the alternates suggested by the map.

At first, I thought the routing on infrequently-maintained, primitive, high-clearance/4wd roads was due to adding more forest roads to the new City Navigator NA NT but when checking the new map vs. several older versions of the map with Mapsource, I saw no changes to the roads available.

This leads me to wonder if maybe older versions of City Nav distinguished between "all-weather" improved forest roads and some of the more primitive ones when using the "Faster Time" Route Preference while the new map assumes all forest roads to be identical, therefore choosing the shortest route to a destination. I'll try to monitor in the future for my thoughts on the new vs. older maps.

So my suggestion to nuvi users who travel forest roads and use the nuvi to create a route to a destination is to use a bit of common sense and carry a paper map even more so than in the past with earlier City Nav maps. It really seems that the new map wants to route you on lesser (or downright impassible) quality high clearance/4wd roads. It's also helpful to have a topo map on a SD card loaded into the nuvi so when needed, you can swap from the City Nav NA NT to the topo to check out your choice of which roads to take.