Having been on the road for over 2 years, we have managed to find our way around pretty well. Before we left, we invested in Street Atlas 2005 Plus (SA), mapping software for Consuelo's Dell Laptop. We also use the Delorme Earthmate GPS, a 2 inch square block on the end of an eight foot USB cable. Usually, it's all we need to figure out where we are and where we are going.
Our travel has some constraints. The most obvious one is that our motorhome is 38 feet long and 8 and 1/2 feet wide, so some streets are just not possible. Another important one is that when our VW Bug is attached, we can't back up more than a couple of inches, because the steering on the bug goes the wrong way when we try to back up. We have to fit these limitations into our travel planning, and having instant location and map info in our hands is vital. For example, if we miss a turn, Consuelo can usually figure out how to get around the block, if there is a block. We've missed a few turns in our 2 years on the road.
On the other side, the mapping software is not perfect, either. Delorme and the other software vendors utilize information provided by county governments and other geographic sources, and it contains errors. To illustrate this, try looking up Sumter Oaks RV park in Bushnell, FL, on Google Earth or Microsoft Virtual Earth. Both locate the park about 1 mile east of where it appears in the satellite imagery. Mapquest appears to be closer, but still looks to be somewhat east of the actual location, based on the curves in the road. Such errors often create adventures for us.
The most annoying error is when we perfomr a "find" in Street Atlas, and it fails to find an exact street address. It provides instead a generic address for the city itself, rather tyhan the street address. My guess is that it is offering the geographic center of the city. It is highly unlikely that the street address we are looking for coincides with the geographic center of the city. So we click on the given address, thinking that it is the exact place we want to go. On several occasions, we have been searching for Walmart stores and Street Atlas provides us with turn-by-turn directions to nowhere. Actually, directions to an arbitrary spot, not a Walmart store. We've driven our big rig through some neighborhood side streets where we know there cannot possibly be any commercial activity, let alone a Walmart. Close examination of the returned address reveals that SA could not find what we were looking for. But an answer is an answer, and off we go. Way off.
There are other errors to contend with, like missing roads. Our last missing road adventure was in Front Royal, VA, searching for the Elk's Club there. We had an exact street address on Guard Hill Road, and Street Atlas found the location. We were driving down highway 320 from Winchester, turned right and followed the SA route through back roads for about 10 miles to get to the specified address. When we went to town that night, we discovered that our location was just .2 miles off of highway 320. Because SA was missing 400 feet of road connection, it could not figure the shorter, simpler route.
Then there are occasions where the software has a road that doesn't exist. Or a portion of a road that it thinks is there, but isn't. The last one I recall was a 2 mile dead end road where the mapping software showed a bridge across a river. Might have been one, once upon a time. Fortunately, we were in our car for this one, so going back was not difficult. And, that was in Maine, where the locals always say, after giving directions, "but I wouldn't go that way". Now I see why.
The New Version. Today the new version of SA arrived in the mail... yes, the mail we were waiting for yesterday. Consuelo eagerly got the new version, shipped on 2 DVDs, onto her (new) laptop. The installation went smoothly for her, smoother than I had expected. I confounded the smoothness, because I recalled that there was an extra step to install the map files on your hard disk in the 2005 version, which I asked if she had done. Since Delorme integrated this into the normal install, we spent a lot of time figuring it out for nothing, it was all done.
So far, so good. We're still here, waiting for the rest of the mail (the prescriptions) to arrive, so we haven't tried using the new software while navigating down the road. The layout and appearance looks good so far. It seems to start up quicker. All of our data files, which contained relevant information for our travels, like the Walmart and Sam's locations, Flying J and Love's Truck stops, State parks, and other info, loaded up just fine. My file of all the places we have stopped in our 2 years of travels loaded up OK. We haven't tried the GPS yet, but I expect it will work fine. Consuelo like the new look, and reports that everything seems quicker.
So I went back to that error on Guard Hill Road to see if it had been fixed. Nope, it was still there. But the new version has a way to add a routable road to the map, so I made the fix myself in my copy and checked to see if the routing tools would include it, and they did. Not only that, But Delorme has included a way to send such corrections to their cartographers for future releases, which I did. So there may be hope for the future.
Meanwhile, we'll benefit from all the other changes and updates that Delorme did manage to get into this version, and we should at least do no worse using these tools in the future while travelling in the motorhome.
Integrating the technology? Not yet! While I sat here looking at the new mapping software with my new image and video and music enabled cell phone, it occurred to me that it would be nice to be able to publish segments of the map to the cell phone, to take along while driving our Bug into town, or looking for attractions. The mapping software already incorporates support for PDA devices, which probably have more memory and better software support for such things. But the concept is similar. The phone and PDA's have screens and buttons. Should be possible, right?
The short answer is, "Not yet." Perhaps Delorme will find a way to easily push map data to cell phones. For most folks, the interconnection is not that simple. PDA's automatically come with USB cables to connect to their computers. Pushing data to the cellphone is more difficult, though not impossible. And I do have a USB cable for the new cell phone. Verizon sells it to download music files from the computer.
But Verizon also sells a mapping solution for the cell phone, as well as an Internet service. They would have little incentive to cooperate with Delorme to find a way to push custom maps to the phone to access while driving around town (let alone turn-by-turn directions). My brief cruise of the web did not turn up any obvious ways to do this.
However, I did find that there are ways to access the Internet with this particular phone for only the cost of air time, or perhaps a bit more, like $1 per month. That, combined with Mapquest or a similar service, could help solve the problem of finding directions in town without having to carry the laptop and GPS.
Or not. I'll have to try it out, and report back in a later blog.
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