Portable vehicle navigation?

[Tobra]

Originally Posted by 2.7RS

I have a collection of good paper charts and compass when I need to go off the grid.

It's an almost extinct skill

I have maps

[flipper35]

We have a Garmin unit for our older cars. Works very well still.

[GH85Carrera]

Paper maps are fine for daylight driving on highways. They suck a lot in a rural area at night looking for the next turn. I was recently in middle of nowhere Missouri at night, and my GPS was wonderful, it told me the next turn was coming up and then as I got closer, it said it is right here.

I was slow to adopt the smart phone technology. I finally got a iPhone, and a few days later I drove over to a business I went to regularly. They had closed that location and moved to 1234 Grand Boulevard. Grand Boulevard in Oklahoma City was the original "ring road" that my grandparents used to take a horse and buggy to go around the city. Now it is a broken up by highways, road that can be just about anywhere. I punched in that address on the sign that said they moved into my iPhone, and I was taken right there.

I have not carried a paper map in my car in more years than I can remember.



I have these maps framed and on display in my office. The Texas map is cool with no interstates, and the cities that are huge now are tiny.

[cstreit]

One recommendation is to buy something with lifetime maps. You don't want to be paying a $100 annual subscription every year to get updates. Yes thats a thing.

[WPOZZZ]

Did you ever settle on a navi?

[fanaudical]

I did - I bought a Garmin Drive 53:

https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/1240929

It does come with lifetime maps and updates. The PC software for this isn't too intrusive and works well. It's small but readily visible when installed in my truck. I took this thing on a business trip to NY and it did a good job navigating me from Buffalo out to Canandaigua and back and all points in between. It has a great database of useful points of interest (fuel, restaurants, etc). It's pretty intuitive to enter and address and it provides reasonable directions. It does what I need it to...

[WPOZZZ]

Good! I was cleaning up my sister's stuff in my office and found the two Tomtoms I bought for her. Was going to send them to you in case you wanted them.

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by fanaudical

I did - I bought a Garmin Drive 53:

https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/1240929

It does come with lifetime maps and updates. The PC software for this isn't too intrusive and works well. It's small but readily visible when installed in my truck. I took this thing on a business trip to NY and it did a good job navigating me from Buffalo out to Canandaigua and back and all points in between. It has a great database of useful points of interest (fuel, restaurants, etc). It's pretty intuitive to enter and address and it provides reasonable directions. It does what I need it to...

The Garmins are great. The right had of the screen pops up with three suggestions for a stop up ahead. I usually ignore them as they seem to be for people traveling with kids with tiny bladders and constant hunger pains and cars with a 5 gallon gas tank. Going through parts of southern New Mexico last summer that feature was blank, with miles and miles and no stops ahead for a while. No cell service, but the GPS was working.

The biggest feature they need to change or add is "keep me out of the ghetto" filter. It is happy to re-rout you right through bad parts of town if the interstate is closed.

[fanaudical]

Originally Posted by WPOZZZ

Good! I was cleaning up my sister's stuff in my office and found the two Tomtoms I bought for her. Was going to send them to you in case you wanted them.

That's a very generous thought - thank you! Perhaps there is another Pelican who can use those.

[3rd_gear_Ted]

The Garmin Spot gives lots of functionality.
Used a lot in remote Baja California

[WPOZZZ]

Originally Posted by fanaudical

That's a very generous thought - thank you! Perhaps there is another Pelican who can use those.

They both work, but are not that fast. They have lifetime updates, but I don't think the oldest unit is supported anymore.

[cstreit]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

I still use a Gamin GPS for my road trips. Out in many parts of New Mexico there was no cell service at all. The GPS was rock solid. Same for many parts of Arkansas.

The Garmin GPS works great and I enter the destination via my cell phone.

A number of gps apps (including free ones) allow download of maps to use with no data, just sayin….

[pwd72s]

GPS? Smart phone? How could I have possibly survived 80 years without either?
Map & compass..a road Atlas on long trips, and difficult as it is, asking directions...all work.

Now to my funny tale. Cindy was being placed in a Rehab center near the Albany, Oregon hospital. RN daughter took our car prior to check in, I guess to make sure paperwork was straight. Returning home, she said I might have trouble finding the place if I hadn't been there before, better let her drive...so, I did, listening (sort of) to her smart phone GPS, which sounded to my old ears like the garbled speaker at Mel's drive-in in the movie "American Grafitti".

What a wonderful tour of Albany neighborhoods that I'd never seen before that this unit gave us! Can't remember the number of directed turns from one street to another. Yes, I kept silent...hard for me to stifle my laughter. Finally, we found ourselves on Pacific Boulevard, a busy 4 lane, heading in the wrong compass direction. "Damn! I missed the turn", said my daughter. The turn she missed would have had us cross 2 lanes of busy traffic going the in opposite direction with no signal or even a turn lane to make the turn safer.

Finally, I opened my mouth: "Get in the right lane, follow the sign saying "to downtown", go under the overpass, get in the left lane, look for a Hospital direction sign, turn left there, go straight to the damned hospital...the rehab facility will be on the right."

Groan...the computer generation...she didn't believe me when I said I knew how to get there...how could somebody who has lived in a nearby town his whole life possibly know how to get to the Albany hospital without ever having used a GPS?

Her smart phone had turned a 1/2 hour 20 odd miles drive into a marathon taking about 1 1/4 hour. To top it all off, she got really pissed at me for laughing at her...pointing out that knowing the time and looking at the sun gives a compass direction.

I figure I've lived 80 trips around the sun without GPS...I figure I can make it to the finish line without ever having used one.

[GH85Carrera]

On my recent trip back from Palm Springs this summer, I fired upt the GPS and punched in my destination hotel in New Mexico. Before I could get on I-10 it rerouted me way south. There was a major accident on I-10 that some of the others I know said it was a several hour stoppage of traffic from an accident the closed the road. The GPS said it a was a 3 hour delay on I-10. That would have sucked sitting in the high heat for 3 hours or more.