Calculated Distance

The POI list shows strait line distances from your current location. When you select one to navigate, it calculates a route and shows the distance by road navigation.

The strait line distances are used to improve the search performance. It would take considerable time and processing power to calculate a route to each POI in the list.

I thought that might be the situation. I was hopping for a more dramatic excuse. Many Thanks though.

When you use the find function it plots a straight line to the destination. When you tell it to go there, it calculates the distance as a great circular route (got to get all the turns to be right handers with no U-turns.)

This "great circular" route must Not be a traditional navigator's great circle route....no way would that add 400 miles.

Can you explain more about this method that makes all turns right-handed?
Thanks!

The great-circle distance is all about spherical geometry and has nothing to do with roads, let alone the turns you might make on them. I really don't know whether Box Car is trying to be funny or is just very confused.

When a gps calculates a route it will calculate in right hand turns. It is easier and quicker on a right hand turn than trying and waiting on left hand turns.

Intriguing.

Can you give me a route I could simulate?

Wikipedia:
The great-circle distance or orthodromic distance is the shortest distance between any two points on the surface of a sphere measured along a path on the surface of the sphere (as opposed to going through the sphere's interior). Because spherical geometry is rather different from ordinary Euclidean geometry, the equations for distance take on a different form. The distance between two points in Euclidean space is the length of a straight line from one point to the other. On the sphere, however, there are no straight lines. In non-Euclidean geometry, straight lines are replaced with geodesics. Geodesics on the sphere are the great circles (circles on the sphere whose centers are coincident with the center of the sphere).

Also Wikipedia:
Great-circle navigation is the practice of navigating a vessel (such as a ship or aircraft) along a track that follows a great circle. A great circle track is the shortest distance between two points on the surface of a planetary body, assuming a perfect spherical model

As others have explained, the POI list just shows straight line "air miles" between you and the POI. Once selected, it calculates the actual "road miles" to get there. You will usually see a longer distance since there won't be any roads that go in a straight line like that. You're going through the mountains, so there will be switchbacks and the route will wind around through the mountains, etc.

Next time you do that, select Show Map. It will show a map of your entire route. Often, this may reveal an odd or incorrect routing decision. Your example adds almost 40% to the distance. I suppose that winding roads going through the mountains would account for that increase. Check the map of the route to be sure it's not routing you 400 miles out of the way to avoid a $2 Toll Road, for example.

Quite a few delivery services favor right turn routes. A google search will return tons of hits

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=3005890&page=1

Even Mythbusters did an episode on right turn routes

http://mythbustersresults.com/waterslide-wipeout

However, I am certain my 765T does not calculate a route using right-turns only. I was interested in why you said:
"When a gps calculates a route it will calculate in right hand turns."

that a gps will favor right hand turns in some of its calculations. That has been discussed here numerous times. The question being (in other posts on this forum) "why does it want me to go further down the road and make a series of rights when I could have just turned left here"?

My 855 and 3790 calculate right hand turns. This past week return from a trip, I stopped at a fast food place to get ourself a drink. Getting back on the street with a red light at the intersection, I could have taken a left turn at the light, but the gps wanted me to take a right turn. Since I wasn't in a hurry, I decided to follow the gps, I ended up at the same place as if I would have taken a left turn at the light.

Do you have avoid U-Turns checked? If it is, that may influence the unit to make more right turns.

When I first got my GPS and was still playing around with it, I asked it to route me to a Walmart just over the state line in GA (lower tax on food).

I had the opposite experience that you apparently did. My route took me on several left turns far past the Walmart before bringing me back to have me turn right into the parking lot.

I actually called Navtew and spoke to a rep who looked at Google Maps with me. She agreed that thee was a way to turn left from an otherwise "divided highway" that had just turned into a 4 lane highway with a traffic light and two left turn lanes.

Essex MT to Bigfork MT
Ft. Meyers to Key West