Suggestions for planning a trip with a Garmin device

I have a 3590LMT and I have used Trip Planner several times to route me where I want to go.

Craig,

I have never been successful in having the unit follow a single road over a distance as such without spending a LOT of time in Base Camp or Mapsource.

For doing this, Base Camp is the better choice as it will set the waypoints and then transfer them to the unit intact so the route is followed as planned. MapSource, Mapquest, S&T and others normally end up transferring just the start and end points leaving you the same as if you just entered the destination.

Stay away from the Trip Planner function. It's a bust as it just breaks down a long trip into segments you travel each day.

Route 66 is an interesting trip, great segments have been replaced with Interstates, but there is a Route 66 POI on the site you could load into BaseCamp and build a route with that would follow those sections of the "mother road" that are still in place.

We tried laying out the Natchez Trace Parkway a few years back using Mapsource and it was a bust. It was easier to just follow the signs the Park Service had in place.

If you want a good example of what a tour looks like built with BaseCamp, download my Mosby Tour. It's only about 20 miles long but it follows a lot of back roads in northern VA - and it stays on route!

If you want a specific route, you have to design it, and the best way is with BaseCamp. Do not try to do it on the device.

Use the Drag And Drop route planner tool. Choose the start and end points, then let BaseCamp calculate and display the route. You then use the drag and drop tool to massage the route to go where you want it to be.

Recommend making several smaller trip segments, instead of using one huge route.

Also, there is a tragic flaw with BaseCamp, in that routes edited or created by BaseCamp lose the ability to be edited, reversed, managed and modified on the GPS device, unless you know the secret. I'm not sure if this applies to a nuvi, I know it applies to the Montana and 64s series. Before you send the route created with BC over to the GPS, you must first change the routing method to Direct. Then send the route to the device, and it should then be editable, reversible, and manageable on the device. Otherwise, you will not be able to modify a route on the fly if you should change plans.

BTDT. I followed Rte 66 from just south of Louisville to Somewhere in AZ. What I ended up doing was creating the trip in Street Atlas mins the information from the "Official Route 66" webpage. It's not actually the official site, but you can Google it. It has numerous files that contain all the routing information to follow Rte 66.

I can tell you, it's bear trying to make Garmin follow it. In SA I had to create a Start then keep adding waypoints until I got it to follow the route, then place the Stop Point.

My Nuvi 760 came with a half dozen Tour Guide Files for Route 66, but it's no longer functional. Rte 66 is a wonderful trip. But a word of caution, if you take the old Sante Fe portion, DO NOT attempt the southbound section back down to I40. Not unless you have a high clearance 4wd vehicle.

It took me about 10 minutes to create a route from Flagstaff AZ to Calgary Alberta on US 89 to the Canadian border using Mapquest.com. That time included looking up U.S. Route 89 in Wikipedia to see where it started in AZ (Flagstaff) and at the Canadian border (in Montana), logging into Mapquest, saving my starting location (S Milton St), calculating the default route, dragging the route line to always stay on Hwy 89, saving those dragged locations as "route stops" and "send"ing the completed route to my 3597.

The route may still need a bit of tweaking to be 100% sure I haven't gone off 89 at some point in the Utah, Wyoming or Idaho mountains and parks but I can't imagine it getting any easier than that.

To be honest it would take me more than 10 minutes to get started with Basecamp, and believe me I've tried. It just doesn't work for me.

Thanks Craig for the heads up on US 89. I'm hoping to get out there this summer.

I agree with others who say Basecamp is the best tool for creating custom routes. I recommend viewing the route you create in Google Earth to iron out any "kinks" that might occur. The whole process is time consuming but I find it worthwhile in the end.

I have also had some issues with Garmin's HD traffic and Live traffic services when navigating a route imported from Basecamp. traffic problems do not always display correctly and the nuvi (3597) will not offer to create a detour around the problem area for some reason. I have not explored this in detail yet though and it could be correctable with a simple menu change.

US89 isn't as difficult as Rte 66. 66 has been decommissioned and large portions have been covered over by I40. Not saying it can't be done that way. Only that it's much more difficult. Especially since the map doesn't show where 66 is, anymore.

I've driven Route 66 and would agree that it would be more difficult than 89 for the reasons you say. What I was attempting to point out was that folks may find Mapquest an easier solution to Craigw problem of creating a route to keep you on a certain highway from start to finish than it would be using Basecamp or other computer software based tools. For example, I can do it in Streets & Trips as well but it's harder to get the route into Trip Planner on the Nuvi than using Mapquest.

Nice to know that 89 will reopen soon. Once they got 89T paved it was a pretty good alternative so even if something happens and 89 doesn't get open for your summer trip, you'll still get from Page to Flagstaff without much trouble.

Thanks for all the comments, everyone.

I totally agree that a Route 66 plan would be much more difficult than an 89 route due to many many decommissioned portions.

US 89 is an odd one. As t92 found and used, many reports show the southern terminus as Flagstaff (Milton Rd and I-40). But I've also found a suggestion that it continues to the Mexican border. Most AZ maps show US 89 continuing from Flagstaff to Ash Fork, Prescott, Yarnell (where the 19 wildland firefighters died), Congress and even to Wickenburg (a NW Phoenix suburb). My thought is that it does continue south past Congress to Wickenburg.

My interest in learning Basecamp matches that of t92. Assuming I do the trip, I can see me getting lazy and simply using the nuvi each day to create a destination on 89 at about the point I would expect to be at 4-6 PM, then simply run the route while forcing myself to stay on 89 at all times. I wouldn't have this plan with an older nuvi that would squawk 'Recalculating' all the time, but with the newer models that don't squawk, it'd be a thought. If need be, I'd have the laptop with BaseCamp if I desired to change my mapping plan after a day or two.

Also, for folks planning to continue north of Page, the 89A alternative remains and is beautiful. It goes over the old Colorado bridge around Bitter Springs, through Jacob Lake (gateway to the North Rim of Grand Canyon), and rejoins 89 in 'downtown' Kanab.

Thanks. That'd be a fun gpx auto tour to try on a nuvi if I were near VA.

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/43483

Thanks for the pdf attachment as well as the gpx file here at The Factory.

I just remembered that I once create a route from Dawson Creek, BC Canada and set the destination as the Robert Service territorial campground in Whitehorse YT. The announced route started with the command (something like): Turn left onto the Alaska Highway, then turn right in 978 miles.

...
There’s a land where the mountains are nameless,
And the rivers all run God knows where;
There are lives that are erring and aimless,
And deaths that just hang by a hair;
There are hardships that nobody reckons;
There are valleys unpeopled and still;
There’s a land—oh, it beckons and beckons,
And I want to go back—and I will.

...

It’s the great, big, broad land ’way up yonder,
It’s the forests where silence has lease;
It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
It’s the stillness that fills me with peace.

You guys have got me itching for a road trip!

I'm already working on my trip to Alaska later this year. It will be a big loop going through numerous national parks.

I generally don't use routes at all. My preparation method is to generate waypoints (I guess on my 3790LMT Garmin calls them "favorites"). Depending on circumstances I may generate them directly on the Nuvi, in Mapsource, BaseCamp, or Google Earth. One way or another I get the waypoints to my unit. On my 3790 it is convenient to assign all the waypoints of interest for a trip to a "category" that identifies that trip.

So on the trip I just specify the next waypoint of interest and accept or reject the unit's proposed routing among the three offered (fastest, shortest, best fuel economy), and when I want to move along a quick look at Where|favorites|this trip's category will show me my next waypoint of interest.

If the routing function is offering you something of special value, of course you should use it, but for all the grief people have with it, I think many folks would be better off just prepping and using wayponts in sequence.

Your method will work, as long as the destination isn't the journey. A trip like Rte 66 requires that you stay on the actual route as much as possible, and your method won't allow that. A lot of the Rte 66 journey isn't routable.

If I plan a route on the Nuvi or with Basecamp I always run a simulation, even if it takes many hours. This will uncover any quirks in the GPS/Basecamp routing system and if I have my cell running SmartLink it will show the current traffic along the way. This can be useful if the simulation is run at about the time I will actually take the trip.

Once you have the route designed in BaseCamp and you think it is what you want, put the route on the GPS and have the GPS calculate the route to make sure it is as expected. Sometimes the GPS tends to do things a little differently.

l also make way points to each place I want to see, but then before I go, I use basecamp to see how (a) goes to (b). If it looks OK I do not make a route. If I see a better way to go I make a route. If it turns out if I need to get to (b) from another location I have the waypoint to use.