This is a sidebar about how we manage our apps, routes and devices.  It was inspired by Suzanne Gibson’s experience on their Loop through lower Bavaria, when they could have used the ability to create and load a GPS on the fly.

We create routes spontaneously quite often now, and have done so several times on this tour when we have changed our preplanned itinerary - for example, when we were in Southwest Crete and our planned ferry ride was cancelled due to high winds.  Being able to do this is great, and new for us.  All the credit goes to our terrific tech support team (aka Rachael) for persevering and figuring out how to do this.  In case it’s useful to others as well, I thought I’d outline what we’re doing.

First, our relevant devices: we each travel with an iPad, a Samsung Galaxy S8 phone, and a Garmin 62S handlebar mounted GPS unit, and a USB-to-GPS connector.  The important thing is that the phone needs to have file explorer functionality, and the ability to connect to the GPS.

In planning the trip, we (the tech support team) schedule a free download of an open source map for the region we will be visiting, and then load it to the GPS.  We obtain the map from OpenfietsMap.

Then, the trip planner (ahem) creates routes for each day of the tour on RidewithGPS, and the tech team exports them to our devices.  Generally this is all done from ‘home’ (but remember, we’re technically homeless now) before departing for the tour, using laptops.

Then, something unexpected occurs - a ferry is cancelled, a pass looks too difficult, we need an easier day, we’ve messed up our preplanning and loaded different routes to our traveling companion’s device, whatever.  Rather than finding the best paper map we can, we can now create a route on the fly!

Briefly: 

• Create a new route with RidewithGPS.  Typically, I do this on the iPad.
• On the phone, export the route to the phone as a GPX (.gpx) file.

• Connect the phone to the Garmin device.
• Using the phone’s file explorer function, copy the new track to the GPX track on the Garmin.

It is also possible to dynamically load new maps to the Garmin using these tools, in case you’re going off the map.  It’s more complicated though and I’m out of time now, so I’ll come back later and complete this.

WARNING!  Try this at home first and make sure you know what you’re doing, especially if you’re loading a new map.  You don’t want to overlay or drop maps or tracks on the device by mistake.