The last couple of days have been productive in knocking out homework associated with route planning. First round of routes for the Trans-America Trail where it starts in Tennessee and passes through Mississippi (not only is that a fun name to say, its also a fun name to type) have been input into Garmin Basecamp software.
It’s easy to be productive when you have something to that’s enjoyable, exciting, or puts you closer to achieving a goal. It also takes the essence of “will” and a little self motivation doesn’t hurt. Plus, these productive days are rather important in getting everything done on schedule or ahead of schedule. This is the sort of trip that deserves focused attention and throwing things together at the last minute is practically a guaranteed recipe for a less than ideal experience. An off-the-cuff trip is okay as a spontaneous weekend escape, but not acceptable for a month-long trip when there are two other companions along for the ride.
As I indicated above, this is the “first round” of route planning, as I’ve only input waypoints for the turn-by-turn directions available on the rollcharts. Not quite certain if the author (Sam Correro) intentially made errors in the rollchart data (i.e. like some authors, software engineers, and artists) in order to identify copyright violations or they’re just honest mistakes. Either way, the “errors” were obvious enough that the corrections were no big deal.
Next, I’ll need to experiment with grouping those waypoints into routes. The waypoints are great references, but doesn’t permit the GPS user as much fluidity while using during the ride, at least compared to a structured route. Ultimately, we’ll have lots of redundancy among the three of us. There will be three GPSs (not including smart phones), paper maps, rollcharts, and a traditional compass.
3gsriders 