Is there a good offroad GPS App?

[Frankencelery]

Every year we go up to northern MN for our vacation, which is coming up. It's on a lake, with great fishing all over the place. But for the last several years, the thing that I look forward to more than anything else is the riding. There are hundreds of miles of trails, and they're just fantastic. The problem is that I don't go too far because the paper maps don't always show everything. For example, you can be watching the map for your next right, and someone has put in a new logging road before that, and before you know it, you're lost. Happened a couple times where I had to backtrack a mile or two to get back to something recognizable.

So it's time for a GPS. I was thinking about a Garmin Montana 600 or 650, but these things cost as much as one of my trikes! Then I said, wait a second, I've got all this horsepower AND a GPS in my phone. Isn't there an app that will do this? I want offline maps and (I don't know if this is the right term) but the ability to lay down breadcrumbs so you can find your way back on something that isn't on the map.

Does anyone have an app that does this? If so, I'd like to hear about it.

UPDATE: I just found out that the available maps for the area I'm riding are in Garmin's .img format.

[Frankencelery]

Update on this. To my knowledge, there isn't an app that lets you download the Garmin maps. I ended up buying an app called Gaia GPS, which so far isn't impressing me. It randomly shows I'm traveling in a direction other than the direction I'm going. That would be pretty much useless on the trails!

I was about to give up on the app idea and buy a moderately affordable Garmin Etrex 20x on Amazon, but they show a 3-week lead time, and the one review is a crappy one. So still looking!

[El Camexican]

When we head out into the abyss my buddy Jorge usually uses Google Earth to plot out the trip. He often finds unused, or forgotten trails that can been seen in the images as well. We then figure out the gas and food stops and upload the route into our GPS’s. I have the 650, but Jorge’s unit is likely worth about $50 bucks. Unfortunately it shuts down a lot and needs to be rebooted way too often. That said I’ve seen a 650 fail on its maiden voyage as well.

[barnett468]

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I guessing that you are looking for a course tracker . . this is a device that will memorize your course so you can drive aimlessly around for hours and when you want to return, all you need to do is push “return to home” or something like that and it will tell you exactly how far to go to turn just like it does if you put a destination in it . . if this is the case, the only places that have that is the military and probably nasa as far as I know but there may be something available nowadays.

Another option is to contact the us forest service and ask if they have digital or gps maps available . . the paper maps in my area are really good and show every trail . . including 100 year old mining trails.


rkarsky@fs.fed.us <rkarsky@fs.fed.us>

http://www.fs.fed.us/database/gps/

http://www.fs.fed.us/about-agency/co...ograms-offices


you can look at the area you are interested in here . . if it is not shown here, I don’t think it will be shown elsewhere . . if it is shown, you can use this as el camexican suggested providing you get a signal.

of course you can put your starting coordinates in it and drive aimlessly around for hours then simply turn around and follow it home but of course you may have to wind you way around the obstacles it may direct you into.

google earth

https://www.google.com/earth/

[El Camexican]

If all else fails there's always the Hansel and Gretel method