Category Archives: GPS

Map apps for iOS

Relay is an interesting map app more for planning city visits than for motorcycle routes. $1.99.

inRoute is featured in the May 2016 BMW Owners News, p-22-23. It is for motorcycle routing but has limited waypoints for imported routes (for iOS only). Free.

 

 

Learning BaseCamp

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Here is a PDF from New England Riders that may be useful to you in learning BaseCamp, the popular program for planning routes for a Garmin GPS. I like the feature of BaseCamp that allows you to shell out to Google Earth so you can see the terrain of an area of the route you are planning. Click on the picture to download the PDF. The download might take a while. It’s 11 megs.

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Campground sites on your Garmin GPS

Hey club,  I was airing some grievences to the Garmin tech and he told me about a great site to download POI’s (points of interest) of varying categories.  I went to www.poi-factory.com and discovered lots of good apps that you can download to your GPS and bring up under the “Extras” button, including one with all the Starbucks locations, and one with lots of independant coffee shops.  I also found one at www.uscampgrounds.info/statemaps.html that has Nat. Park, Nat. Forest, State Park and many other types of campgrounds.  This has been a big complaint of mine for a while that it was so hard to find campgrounds on the Garmin.  You do need to download the free POI loader from the Garmin web-site first. http://www8.garmin.com/support/collection.jsp?product=999-99999-12      Explanations are user-friendly. I’ll be glad to assist if needed.

Rick Nelson, Happy Camper

 

 

 

 

Roads in Brown County — Things are not always as they appear to be

DNR gate at the end of Comb's Road

This should come as no shock, but I thought it was interesting and worth sharing. 

Just be careful as you plan trips around Brown Co. The roads on your GPS, DeLorme Atlas and Google maps may not be open.

The photo above was taken on Comb’s Road just outside of Elkinsville. 
This is what you currently see on Google Maps. Point ‘A’ is the location of the gate and it appears the road goes on through.
It’s been closed due to lack of county maintenance funds. I spoke with some locals who were very nice and told me the gate opens with a key making it accessible for handicapped hunters through the DNR. But lose the notion of going around with your bike. If they catch you on it otherwise you’re going to be in trouble. And according to the guy I spoke with he wouldn’t attempt it on his trials bike! Before the roads were closed, they were throughly trashed by 4×4’s and then erosion has taken a toll, as well.
The lack of maintenance funds has also meant some roads reverting from pavement to gravel–which is a good thing for GS purposes! 
The gravel roads that I found were uniformly in excellent condition, otherwise. But many of them ended in similar barricaded dead ends. DeLorme/Garmin/Google/NavTeq have a lot of updating to do!
Funny aside, just to get the first photo I went a ways down a pretty normal gravel road. Then the gravel got a little thinner. Then there was an old trailer parked in a meadow. Then it turned into what looked like somebody’s driveway, but no posted signs for end or road or private property, etc at any point. Then there’s a horse just standing and grazing, unfenced in this driveway. A small stream crossing and the road changes to a little more trail-like covered in horse droppings going along side a fenced pasture. Then the gate pictured above pops up! There was a small turn-around/parking area there. Maybe for hikers/mountain bikers?
-Dallas Peak