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Using Google Maps better for motorcycle trip planning
I posted this on the GSR West Virginia Rally 2014, but thought I should make this info more accessible for everyone to see. For those of you who haven't used Google Maps to it's full potential when planning trip routes, Here's some slightly advanced and very handy tips. You can use google maps' search bar to type in "gas" or "Dairy queen" etc, and it will keep your map displayed, but will bring up locations of all of the searched items on the left bar with the pinpoints on the map. To switch back to the directions on the left bar of google, go to the satellite/map view box in the top right of the map, and below that you will hold the mouse over the down arrow to open the menu. Then you will see the two or more maps overlayed together listed as menu options. Click on the "driving directions to..." line and then the directions will pop back up on the left bar and you will be able to edit that map again and add map destination points, and the gas or food locations will only appear as numberless dots on the map. To get rid of them, on that same dropdown, you click the x of course. Very handy in route planning - especially on high performance gas guzzlers and bikes with tiny tanks.
I also find the different map views good for various planning needs. The Satellite view shows you if it is a forested area or farmland, and you can see if it is more populated or totally desolate. The roads pop out a lot better against the darker green of the forest/plant colors vs the map view or terrain view, but it takes longer to load.
If you switch back to the map view, on the dropdown menu, you will now have the Terrain layer as an option. This is AWESOME for looking for the fun routes but the road lines blend in a bit with the multi-colored topo/relief background colors. Sort of a hybrid topographical/globe relief view. Look for the good hills to find the twisties in areas in question (WV is ALL hills though
). The smaller tightly packed hills often lend themselves to the most twisted roads, as well as the very large and erraticly shaped hills/mountains that have roads winding around, across or over them. You can also determine if the roads are ridgetop rides, hill/mountain crossings, or if they run in a valley next to a river, or along the side of a mountain between the ridge and the valley (like Smoke Hole Rd) etc. Nice info to know, especially since the drastic elevation changes always make it more fun.
Smoke Hole Rd below climbs southbound up onto the side of North Fork Mountain a little ways and then runs parallel to the ridge for 5 miles of technical tight turns about 1/3 the way up the side, and then mellows out to farmable land on the hills before if descends to a twisty/sweepers flat route beyond the map that follows that twisty river. All of these things you can determine from the terrain view when planning and choosing your routes.
On the Satellite view, you can typically see the mountains, as one side past the ridge will usually have a more shadowed darker color to it from the sunlight. Looking at the mountains in eastern WV/Western VA on the terrain view vs the small mountains/big hills vs the rolling foothills of western WV/easternKY/SE Ohio show you very different appearances of the terrain when using that option. I've spent a LOT of time, especially wintertime down-time, on google maps planning fun routes and trying to find the best rides in the 35% of Ohio that is not as flat as a board. Luckily 35 minutes southeast of Columbus (home) is where the Appalachian Foothills begin, and I have some pretty great 5-7 hour routes of scenic twisties starting that close to home. I wouldn't ride nearly as much if it weren't for the massive amount of hill-terrain and twisties and forests in SE Ohio.
For the basics, if you just enter in a start and end destination, google just picks it's fastest preferred route (takes closures and detours into consideration without even telling you, re-routes sometimes in weird ways - then you find later that the road was closed that you wanted - bridge out, etc). Here's a terrain view of my favorite nearby SE Ohio twisty/scenic route:
Back to the basics of plotting your route. If you are seeking out a twisty/scenic route and not necessarily an immediate destination, it is best to click and hold on the route and drag the route to your preferred roads. The dot it leaves behind, you can right click and turn it into a destination along the route. Often taking the scenic/twisty way, you have to do this several times, as placing a point on the first portion of the twisty road, google will default to taking you from there to the nearest direct/interstate route.
Once signed in to your google account, clicking "save to My Maps" or "My Places" at the bottom only works for basic routes with only a few destinations before google gets confused on 14 "destination" points, and the map gets broken up sometimes. It also converts it to a fixed route then, not the easily edit-able destination boxes on the left. It turns it into a series of lines along the roads, and not a continuous route. It does give you full driving directions still, however.
If saving maps that way, it is best for the complex maps to just sign in to google and go to the "My Places" section and create the map from there, instead of creating on standard google maps and saving it to convert to the saved format. This is more complicated and more time consuming, but sometimes necessary due to the google maps shortcomings of saving your route to "My Places." When making a route this way, you have to select the tool to "draw a line ALONG ROADS." Your left bar will now include a list of the lines and points that you have added to the map. It is up to you to make them a continuous route connecting the various line segments of your route. Sometimes the "draw a line along roads" or "follow roads" option gets unselected, and you have to click on the line to bring up an info box of driving directions and info, and find the menu to change the properties.
Also I should note that on saved routes, Google Maps for Android (and iPhone?) current versions no longer work on those map links. If you downgrade to the older and better versions of Maps 6.9 or earlier, you re-gain the ability to view your saved routes.
Also, If you are signed in, and you create the standard google maps driving directions, and then on the left directions bar near the top next to the printer icon, there is a chain link icon. Clicking on this it will give you the link to the current map (what is in the browser address bar will not necessarily work), give you code to embed it in a website, and also give you the option to shorten the complex and lengthy URL to a very short goo.gl/dfhhaeEDF type url. Using this shortening feature, it actually saves the map to your google account on http://goo.gl , and you can even look up stats on it to see how many times it has been viewed. Very lengthy, complex directions I have noticed it sometimes still gives you a longer URL if it is too hard to encode in a 7 alphabet character or so code.
Examples:
-shortened URL:
-standard URL (these get VERY LENGTHY):
-saved to "my places" format:
Here's a comparison of my original route saved to "My Places" vs a revised route in the standard google directions format only saved to your account by clicking "shorten URL" -
saved to my places:
standard google maps format saved using "shorten URL":
I posted this on the GSR West Virginia Rally 2014, but thought I should make this info more accessible for everyone to see. For those of you who haven't used Google Maps to it's full potential when planning trip routes, Here's some slightly advanced and very handy tips. You can use google maps' search bar to type in "gas" or "Dairy queen" etc, and it will keep your map displayed, but will bring up locations of all of the searched items on the left bar with the pinpoints on the map. To switch back to the directions on the left bar of google, go to the satellite/map view box in the top right of the map, and below that you will hold the mouse over the down arrow to open the menu. Then you will see the two or more maps overlayed together listed as menu options. Click on the "driving directions to..." line and then the directions will pop back up on the left bar and you will be able to edit that map again and add map destination points, and the gas or food locations will only appear as numberless dots on the map. To get rid of them, on that same dropdown, you click the x of course. Very handy in route planning - especially on high performance gas guzzlers and bikes with tiny tanks.
I also find the different map views good for various planning needs. The Satellite view shows you if it is a forested area or farmland, and you can see if it is more populated or totally desolate. The roads pop out a lot better against the darker green of the forest/plant colors vs the map view or terrain view, but it takes longer to load.
If you switch back to the map view, on the dropdown menu, you will now have the Terrain layer as an option. This is AWESOME for looking for the fun routes but the road lines blend in a bit with the multi-colored topo/relief background colors. Sort of a hybrid topographical/globe relief view. Look for the good hills to find the twisties in areas in question (WV is ALL hills though
). The smaller tightly packed hills often lend themselves to the most twisted roads, as well as the very large and erraticly shaped hills/mountains that have roads winding around, across or over them. You can also determine if the roads are ridgetop rides, hill/mountain crossings, or if they run in a valley next to a river, or along the side of a mountain between the ridge and the valley (like Smoke Hole Rd) etc. Nice info to know, especially since the drastic elevation changes always make it more fun. Smoke Hole Rd below climbs southbound up onto the side of North Fork Mountain a little ways and then runs parallel to the ridge for 5 miles of technical tight turns about 1/3 the way up the side, and then mellows out to farmable land on the hills before if descends to a twisty/sweepers flat route beyond the map that follows that twisty river. All of these things you can determine from the terrain view when planning and choosing your routes.
On the Satellite view, you can typically see the mountains, as one side past the ridge will usually have a more shadowed darker color to it from the sunlight. Looking at the mountains in eastern WV/Western VA on the terrain view vs the small mountains/big hills vs the rolling foothills of western WV/easternKY/SE Ohio show you very different appearances of the terrain when using that option. I've spent a LOT of time, especially wintertime down-time, on google maps planning fun routes and trying to find the best rides in the 35% of Ohio that is not as flat as a board. Luckily 35 minutes southeast of Columbus (home) is where the Appalachian Foothills begin, and I have some pretty great 5-7 hour routes of scenic twisties starting that close to home. I wouldn't ride nearly as much if it weren't for the massive amount of hill-terrain and twisties and forests in SE Ohio.
For the basics, if you just enter in a start and end destination, google just picks it's fastest preferred route (takes closures and detours into consideration without even telling you, re-routes sometimes in weird ways - then you find later that the road was closed that you wanted - bridge out, etc). Here's a terrain view of my favorite nearby SE Ohio twisty/scenic route:
Back to the basics of plotting your route. If you are seeking out a twisty/scenic route and not necessarily an immediate destination, it is best to click and hold on the route and drag the route to your preferred roads. The dot it leaves behind, you can right click and turn it into a destination along the route. Often taking the scenic/twisty way, you have to do this several times, as placing a point on the first portion of the twisty road, google will default to taking you from there to the nearest direct/interstate route.
Once signed in to your google account, clicking "save to My Maps" or "My Places" at the bottom only works for basic routes with only a few destinations before google gets confused on 14 "destination" points, and the map gets broken up sometimes. It also converts it to a fixed route then, not the easily edit-able destination boxes on the left. It turns it into a series of lines along the roads, and not a continuous route. It does give you full driving directions still, however.
If saving maps that way, it is best for the complex maps to just sign in to google and go to the "My Places" section and create the map from there, instead of creating on standard google maps and saving it to convert to the saved format. This is more complicated and more time consuming, but sometimes necessary due to the google maps shortcomings of saving your route to "My Places." When making a route this way, you have to select the tool to "draw a line ALONG ROADS." Your left bar will now include a list of the lines and points that you have added to the map. It is up to you to make them a continuous route connecting the various line segments of your route. Sometimes the "draw a line along roads" or "follow roads" option gets unselected, and you have to click on the line to bring up an info box of driving directions and info, and find the menu to change the properties.
Also I should note that on saved routes, Google Maps for Android (and iPhone?) current versions no longer work on those map links. If you downgrade to the older and better versions of Maps 6.9 or earlier, you re-gain the ability to view your saved routes.
Also, If you are signed in, and you create the standard google maps driving directions, and then on the left directions bar near the top next to the printer icon, there is a chain link icon. Clicking on this it will give you the link to the current map (what is in the browser address bar will not necessarily work), give you code to embed it in a website, and also give you the option to shorten the complex and lengthy URL to a very short goo.gl/dfhhaeEDF type url. Using this shortening feature, it actually saves the map to your google account on http://goo.gl , and you can even look up stats on it to see how many times it has been viewed. Very lengthy, complex directions I have noticed it sometimes still gives you a longer URL if it is too hard to encode in a 7 alphabet character or so code.
Examples:
-shortened URL:
-standard URL (these get VERY LENGTHY):
-saved to "my places" format:
Here's a comparison of my original route saved to "My Places" vs a revised route in the standard google directions format only saved to your account by clicking "shorten URL" -
saved to my places:
standard google maps format saved using "shorten URL":
that we may not have ventured to without this info and were able to avoid areas the might not have been any fun at all.
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