GoogleMap & GPS combination

The ultimate trip planning and GPS combination from FR Forum

I thought I would make a general post to the forum on the ultimate trip planning and GPS combination we put together today. I had asked on a different thread asking what software or apps people use and got mostly useless replies. People mentioned useful mapping sites like road trippers which I was already familiar with and which is excellent for researching scenic things to do when traveling from point A to B. But there all you get is a fixed route with no GPS capability.

I was looking for something which allows you to map a route using something like Google maps on a full sized computer screen, dragging the suggested routes to take scenic back roads and byways and avoid major highways much of the time, across 8 or more waypoints, and then be able to input that route into some sort of GPS app which then autocorrects as you travel, and talks you through the twists and turns each step of the way. You would think this would be easy to find… it is not.

Today we found it, finally. Here’s what we did:

1) Map a route using Google maps with 8 waypoints, dragging the route to include various back roads for pleasure cruising rather than direct route travel
2) Copy the final URL from the browser address bar into GPS Visualizer
GPS Visualizer: Convert GPS files to plain text or GPX
Set output format at the top to GPX Format, then paste the google maps URL into “URL of file on the web” and click “Convert”
4) Save the converted GPX file to your hard drive
5) Now load the app from inRoute Route Planner onto the iPad
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/inro…er/id703796787
6) Run inRoute and browse to the saved GPX file.

Voila… now, we head off down the road and the iPad shows the mapped route and talks us through each and every turn and autocorrects if we get off the pre-planned route. 

I hope others will benefit from this.

There is also a way to import the GPX file into Garmin but it is not nearly as convenient or well designed as inRoute for the iPad.