My wife and I are planning to take a cross country trip starting next spring and are in need of a good planning app. I found one that looks pretty comprehensive, "Roadpass Pro. Does anyone have any experience with it or recommend a different app.
Travel Planning Apps
- Thread starter Jim (Jericho Brew)
- Start date
Jim,
My condolences, you have missed the best two ever. Strips and Treats was preferred by some, but I took to favor Street Atlas for its device flexibility. Enough of reminiscing.
Lets start with the obvious. There are two of you. If you are not doing Bonsai runs and staying under 400 miles a day, then you should both be in front seats. One be the driver and the other the navigator. Having an active navigator takes a lot of that load off the driver and you both enjoy things more. Get a TV tray table to be in front of the navigator for the stuff that is needed.
I have never run Roadpass at any level. I have given up on RVtripplanner as it only is friendly if you want to stay on the highway except to go to for profit cramp grounds. Copilot looked good, but then the dropped the affordable RV version and I haven't tried it since.
IMHO, To do this right you need at least three things:
A reliable and easy to understand enroute navigator. For many, this is a stand alone GPS.
A planning package that can advise on points of interest, fuel stops and End Of Day locations.
A data package that can provide many possible locations of all of the above.
I have been looking and have found that now no one single app can do it all. (SA & S&T could) Borrow what ever GPS you can to try out and keep borrowing others until you find one you like. You can use a smart phone for this, but if you go far off the blue road, you will drive off the edge of the earth. You can preload maps, but that can be problematic too if you are not sure where the day will take you. I have tried this on several occasions and most have failed to one level or another.
The Garmin Basecamp is a joke. When you think that they bought out Delorme and still published that loser, I have a difficult time reconciling that. All they had to do with SA was update the cartography and they would have a hands down winner. They blew that one BIG TIME.
In complete honesty, if you start with Google Maps and then modify each day's route to suit your desires, you are most of the way there. We have found that this is most easily done on a laptop or a tablet (we settled on a laptop). We power the laptop enroute with a small inverter. While I have not successfully linked any GPS to GM, I am told it can be done if you have a tablet with GPS. Ours did not.
If you set your phone up as a hotspot (a repeater makes it more effective) and use that to gather information on the run, you can pull off some amazing discoveries.
I advise that you carry at least a minimum of paper charts (maps) because they continue to display information when the lights go out.
I hope this rant is some value.
Matt
My condolences, you have missed the best two ever. Strips and Treats was preferred by some, but I took to favor Street Atlas for its device flexibility. Enough of reminiscing.
Lets start with the obvious. There are two of you. If you are not doing Bonsai runs and staying under 400 miles a day, then you should both be in front seats. One be the driver and the other the navigator. Having an active navigator takes a lot of that load off the driver and you both enjoy things more. Get a TV tray table to be in front of the navigator for the stuff that is needed.
I have never run Roadpass at any level. I have given up on RVtripplanner as it only is friendly if you want to stay on the highway except to go to for profit cramp grounds. Copilot looked good, but then the dropped the affordable RV version and I haven't tried it since.
IMHO, To do this right you need at least three things:
A reliable and easy to understand enroute navigator. For many, this is a stand alone GPS.
A planning package that can advise on points of interest, fuel stops and End Of Day locations.
A data package that can provide many possible locations of all of the above.
I have been looking and have found that now no one single app can do it all. (SA & S&T could) Borrow what ever GPS you can to try out and keep borrowing others until you find one you like. You can use a smart phone for this, but if you go far off the blue road, you will drive off the edge of the earth. You can preload maps, but that can be problematic too if you are not sure where the day will take you. I have tried this on several occasions and most have failed to one level or another.
The Garmin Basecamp is a joke. When you think that they bought out Delorme and still published that loser, I have a difficult time reconciling that. All they had to do with SA was update the cartography and they would have a hands down winner. They blew that one BIG TIME.
In complete honesty, if you start with Google Maps and then modify each day's route to suit your desires, you are most of the way there. We have found that this is most easily done on a laptop or a tablet (we settled on a laptop). We power the laptop enroute with a small inverter. While I have not successfully linked any GPS to GM, I am told it can be done if you have a tablet with GPS. Ours did not.
If you set your phone up as a hotspot (a repeater makes it more effective) and use that to gather information on the run, you can pull off some amazing discoveries.
I advise that you carry at least a minimum of paper charts (maps) because they continue to display information when the lights go out.
I hope this rant is some value.
Matt
Thanks for the well analyzed reply. You are right about having google maps and paper charts. We have a Rand McNally Atlas and we have come to be very proficient with google. I like your suggestion of the navigator having a table or tray as well.
Matt,
As you may be aware, Our GPS took us down a steep mountain road with a very bad out come. This week end my wife took out the Atlas. We had a great time and enjoyed the navigation. We loved it! We will be doing more old school navigation as a couple. It's highly recommended.
Take care,
Tom K
As you may be aware, Our GPS took us down a steep mountain road with a very bad out come. This week end my wife took out the Atlas. We had a great time and enjoyed the navigation. We loved it! We will be doing more old school navigation as a couple. It's highly recommended.
Take care,
Tom K
An additional short about two things.
The truckers atlas has a lot of information that is meaningless to a GMC, but it has a spiral binding that lets you lay it out flat. I find this to be very convenient.
GPS are not a replacement for brains. I have owned one or another for 40+ years. They all omit important details. If you expect to be places that may have severe grades, get the Mountain Directory. Or at least look and decide if you want east of west.
If you buy a new GPS, put it in your car first and learn what it is telling you and to use it before you need to depend on it.
Matt
The truckers atlas has a lot of information that is meaningless to a GMC, but it has a spiral binding that lets you lay it out flat. I find this to be very convenient.
GPS are not a replacement for brains. I have owned one or another for 40+ years. They all omit important details. If you expect to be places that may have severe grades, get the Mountain Directory. Or at least look and decide if you want east of west.
If you buy a new GPS, put it in your car first and learn what it is telling you and to use it before you need to depend on it.
Matt
Fool me once! Now my GPS thinks I am a 40' Prevost bus. I will never let it know I am only 23' again.
Tom K.
Tom K.
I still use it for backpacking and have for years, and I absolutely love it (despite the lack of regular updates). Solely based on its name, Base Camp, I'm not sure what would possess someone to use it for RV'ing. I'm sure it's not well suited for that. Even if it's promoted as an option, that would be quite outside its wheelhouse as you've experienced. I wouldn't call it a joke on the whole though--it's just fine when used for its designed purpose.
If it wasn't supposed to be a road-trip planner, why are the included maps all about roads and highways. For wilderness travel Delorme Topographic (even now way out of date) still has Base Camp hammered in my very experienced opinion. Garmin has humped the pooch for people that stay on the dirt. They are only a little better if you are on water, because they don't have to update the ocean.
Matt
Matt
I still use Basecamp for planning routes because I can add an unlimited amount of stops but I personally plan the route myself because Basecamp never plans the best route no matter using faster/distance. You also have to set the Garmin not to change your route.
I tried several apps that were supposed to be specifically for RV travel. I found pretty much all of them over promising and under delivering... All their route planning us feeding off the Google Maps, but it's ferls "crippled" - difficult to make changes or divert from your initial destination. As far as plain route planning, these days I just use Google maps. I like to do it on a computer because you can see better details of the map and the route. Additionally, you can add "via" points by just dragging to suggested route. This way you can go where you want, or force the route atound the area you want to avoid. Once I got everything the way I like it, i choose "Send route to your phone" option. Then I can just open it on my phone and have a that route map with directions displayed in front of me as I navigate the new area.
Google maps is my go to for all things local and by local I mean anywhere in New England. Now we are planning a trip cross country and need something that will also give us suggestions on rv safe routes, camping options and local attractions. RV Life looks pretty good to me so far.
Jim,
Shortly after the demise of Street Atlas, I tried very hard to make Google maps on the phone work for me. From my experience, and this depends on your equipment and your carrier, your will be able to make it work all the while in the east coast megopolis with the possible exception of northern Maine and maybe some of New York. From there until you are past Illinois, you should be good. If you have an external antenna and repeater, you will do better. I tried the preloading maps plan, but I guess I wasn't very good at it and have not tried again. Even with the pre-loaded charts, we drove off the end of the earth several times. (We were fortunate that we avoided the fate of Columbus's forth ship.) Along the northern tier, things can get really sparse. There is a reason that they call Montana "Big Sky Country". That is what there is most of.
Matt
Shortly after the demise of Street Atlas, I tried very hard to make Google maps on the phone work for me. From my experience, and this depends on your equipment and your carrier, your will be able to make it work all the while in the east coast megopolis with the possible exception of northern Maine and maybe some of New York. From there until you are past Illinois, you should be good. If you have an external antenna and repeater, you will do better. I tried the preloading maps plan, but I guess I wasn't very good at it and have not tried again. Even with the pre-loaded charts, we drove off the end of the earth several times. (We were fortunate that we avoided the fate of Columbus's forth ship.) Along the northern tier, things can get really sparse. There is a reason that they call Montana "Big Sky Country". That is what there is most of.
Matt
I bet a West Coaster would have as much chance of of getting lost in your neck of the woods as you did in Montana/Wild West
