Itinerary Mapping Program

[sfrantz]

We will be going full-time in 192 days (yes, I am counting). We will have several places we need want to be at specific times. Maybe six times and places a year. In between we are footloose and fancy free. [side note: is it a good thing to have loose feet and be free from fancy?]

I'm looking for a website or program that will allow me to put in specific addresses and dates on a map and have it plot the route. Then we could look at this and see what places along the way we want to visit. Also, if something interesting comes up, we could plug it in and see how it changes the itinerary.

I know I can do most of this with Google Maps, but it doesn't have the date function. I can put the date in the notes, but that's not what I want.

Tripit does this, but it doesn't plan the route; it draws straight lines.

Anyone found anything? I'm too much of a technogeek to use a physical map and pins.

[Dixieray53]

Irish Proverb..." If you want to make God laugh, make a plan.." Best wishes...500 + days for us...
We are jealous !!!!

[Wayne M]

If you are on a PC or PC Laptop, look into Microsoft Streets and Trips. It will do itinerary planning. It's inexpensive, and if you want to got the whole hog route of a GPS, you can buy the $100+ version one time, and then just the program for $30 each year if you want the updates. If you already have a plug in GPS Antenna, just the program will work. Well, it did for me with two different gps antenna's, one being MS&T.

[Ray,IN]

Why is the dates thing so important? Just use a quality mapping program for routing, like Wayne said. Save each routing result by date and destination.

[Possum]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wayne M If you are on a PC or PC Laptop, look into Microsoft Streets and Trips. It will do itinerary planning. It's inexpensive, and if you want to got the whole hog route of a GPS, you can buy the $100+ version one time, and then just the program for $30 each year if you want the updates. If you already have a plug in GPS Antenna, just the program will work. Well, it did for me with two different gps antenna's, one being MS&T.

I bought a Holux u213 GPS receiver that plugs into my laptop and I got it off e-bay for $15.00 and the newest Streets and Trips 2010 was on sale at our Radio Shack wannabee here in Canada for $40.00 ish dollars. It works real well and does street by street, lane indication and the whole nine yards when it comes to navigation. I use it for itinerary planning and the whole works can run off the inverter I have hooked up in the motorhome. The S&T program from Microsoft has a lot of neat features for planning that a normal GPS is not (to my knowledge) capable of doing. I like the ability of planning a complete trip start to end with all the stops and campgrounds indicated at about 300 mile intervals. We enjoy the leisure time while on the road and the 300 miles is about all we want to travel in a normal day.

On one trip we were only doing about 60 to 100 miles a day and that was so much fun to just know we didn't have to hurry for any reason. I will have to play with the dates thing to see how that could be made to work.

[WheelingIt]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wayne M If you are on a PC or PC Laptop, look into Microsoft Streets and Trips. It will do itinerary planning.

X2 on this recomendation. One of our neighbors has this and showed us all the features yesterday. Very cool. We're sold and getting it ourselves.

[pdq_bc]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sfrantz We will be going full-time in 192 days (yes, I am counting).....

hi Stephen

LOL - i have an entire excel spreadsheet!
Calculates the total number of days and the split of those days into "work days" and "non-work days"
There is a great count down site to assist those of us hat "What to Know" the number of days remaining

mM favourite software has been Trip Maker by Rand McNally (non longer in production) - it did it all for me
yes - tried others - just nothing as robust and easy to use

regards, peter

[Clay L]

We use Delorme's Street Atlas along with their "hockey puck " GPS.
You see it here http://shop.delorme.com/OA_HTML/DELi...minisite=10020

[TroutScout]

I ,and some others, can't get Streets and Trips to work on Windows 7, 64 bit computers. Check out Microsoft's answers page:

:Streets and Trips 2009 and Windows 7 Pro 64 bit?

[Possum]

I run mine on an XP OS laptop and I plan on getting a small XP based netbook. The program works great too bad the M$ OS didn't work as well.

[High Plains]

We use Streets and Trips too. I hook up my handheld Garmin Etrex to it for finding our location. I am a bit of a navigation nerd, I will use paper maps, the PC and GPS when planning. I also carry a compass too.

[paz]

We have both MS Streets & Trips 2004 and DeLorme Street Atlas 2009. Both run fine on our Windows 7 computer.

The reason we have such an old version of S&T is we really prefer DeLorme. Our favorite feature is that you can have a Map File that is made up of numerous routes. The routes, which represent various legs of your trip, can be turned off and on and moved in and out of the Map File as needed. It gives you a lot of flexibility so you can try numerous variations of different legs of your overall trip.

DeLorme doesn't have a date function; but it does have a feature that lets you set a preferred daily travel time, and it will then indicate stopping points along the route. These stopping points will show you where to look for overnight accommodations along your route.

We have a DeLorme GPS unit that plugs into the computer. The GPS also works with MS S&T, but we fund it's inconvenient to have the big laptop open the whole time we drive. If you close the computer, it hibernates and it takes too long to wake it up if you need a quick clarification of your direction. We use a Garmin Nuvi for navigation. As with any GPS, verify you route beforehand, especially if you're traveling in a big RV.

[okie-dokie]

I use Streets & Trips, on a PC with windows XP. There are so many things you can do with Streets & Trips. I also use a Garmin 2730 gps.

[Lorna]

Early last year I downloaded a full (2009) Streets & Trips off a pirated site (for those of you who are horrified at that... just zip it). It sat on my desktop for months and I never seemed to get past the opening page. Except once. It was a PITA. A couple weeks ago I couldn't find my atlas so I started planning a trip on S&T. I have decided that I do not like S&T. I'm going to uninstall it. I dislike having to have a time to stop traveling. I dislike having to tell it every single turn that I want to go such as.. stay on USXXX and take US XX at the junction. Instead it takes me the way it wants me to go and I have to correct it 30 times just to get thru/around a decent sized town. And all those "waypoints" just to get thru a town. For me, there is more work to the software program than there is to me taking a wet erase overhead projection marker and plotting my route on my atlas (which has each page covered with a clear plastic overhead projection sheet). I write my route down, tuck a post-it note under the sheet if needed. I will stick to my low tech method since I am quite capable of reading a map and I have better, easier, faster control over a pen than the computer program.