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I lean in the Intertoobs a lot for these trips, and it might show in the posts…
For anyone interested, I have a few sites and tools I use to prep for the trips… If it’s useful to anyone else, here’s the overview of the process. Feel free to ask for details!
Hardware:
On the bike, I carry a Garmin Oregon 600. Basically a handheld GPS, it has bike mount options, so it can be used like the more common Garmin Edge dedicated bike GPS computers. Those are nice, but I don’t need cadence, power and all that bike racer stuff. The Oregon has a fair sized colour screen and more importantly, micro SD card expansion and battery power. The latter is extremely useful, as you can toss in a pair of lithium AA batteries and you are good for 3-4 days of navigating and tracking your route. The Edges, to my knowledge, are good for a few hours at best.
The SD capability allows me to load gpx tracks on the fly. I like to pre-load any tracks I expect to use before leaving for the trip, but if mistakes are made (and mistakes are made), I can update track as needed.
Why would I need to update a track? Can’t I just ask my GPS to route me where I need to go? Well, sure, but you are then at the will of the algorithm of the GPS, which probably won’t use the most bike-friendly route. Instead, I use an online resource, www.gpsies.com, to figure out where I want to go. It’s a donation site – you can use it totally for free, but I have donated annually to it as I actually get a ton of value from it. On the site, you can view various map types (google, satellite, topo, and most importantly a couple of open source cycling maps), and create your own map routes, then download them in various formats.
I typically create a bike route following the various routes overplayed in the open source bike maps. I can then download it as a Google Earth KML file, which will open up on Google Earth. From there, I can look at street views along the way, photos, etc, and go back to gpsies and modify the route as desired.
Next tool? Archie Camping. Another free site, this lists every campground in Europe is pretty much any format you want. I’ll download the Google Earth format for the country of my route and load that into Google Earth as well. This lets me see the possible camp sites along my bike routes. I can zoom in, check out the sites’ web pages and decide which ones might be suitable. Back in gpsies.com, I can add these as waypoints along my tracks so they appear on my Garmin GPS track, labeled according to my own preferences. (btw, I also download the entire country of interest’s campground file to my gps so every campground is there as a backup…though sometimes a campground ends up as not existing or not really a campground – that’s why I try to check them out online first).
Other critical hardware tool is an Airstash wifi USB stick. This gets charges up, or can be programmed, by the USB connection. It has no memory, but instead takes a USB SD card. I use a USB to micro-USB adapter card instead. So, this lets me power up the Airstash as a wifi hotspot, which I can connect my iPad to. Using the Airstash app on iPad, I can transfer files from my iPad TO the micro-SD card from my Garmin. Sounds simple, but transferring files from an Apple device to an external memory card is actually pretty non-Apple. The Airstash makes you jump throug a few hoops, but it works. So on the road, I can use my iPad to log onto gpsies.com, create a new route, download it as gpx to the Airstash app, then transfer it to the Garmin’s SD card and, well, Bob’s your uncle. I’ve done this a couple of times this trip already and it’s invaluable.
Final tool? Mapout’s Apple app. I have the paid version on my phone and iPad – it lets you download gpx files (i.e. the same ones I load into my Garmin), ad also download the background map tiles showing all the roads around the track. Basically a bigger view of what you get on the Garmin, but it also lets you see the elevations of the track, and see the distances along any point of the track (“how far are we from that campground along this track?”). Sounds simple, and it is, but it’s a great tool when planning day-today strategy, and I happily paid for the full version.
For what it’s worth, any endorsements here are all my own…
OK, back to actually bike touring!
