Using Google Maps for RV Travel

hi it's Jerry with I love RV life I'm doing some travel planning like to give you some tips on how you can use your PC your phone or maybe a tablet on making your trip easier and definitely more enjoyable [Music] well Hayase giri and i am doing some travel planning Joan and I are getting ready to go up north and enjoy the fall leaves and Oktoberfest and all those things that go with that and we used to be big Garmin users and TomTom users I was a corporate traveler for a very very long time and use those devices all the time to you know point destination a B or C and as I was flying into other cities I would use those GPS devices to be able to find locations that I didn't have a clue where they were at and we tried to use those for about the first year so when we started our V travel now I will say this the device has always got us to the destination we may not like how we got there and I think regardless of whether you're using something like Google Maps or many of the saw that many of the applications you find online or whether you're using one of these GPS devices everybody has that story right that you took the wrong road and ended up in a place you didn't want to be in a car or in something that's small maybe a small Class B or a small Class C that is not a big an issue because you can always find a driveway or find some way that you can turn around relatively easy if you're in a big rig a big Class A or even a big Class C or if you're like Joan and I we've got a 40-foot fifth wheel 56 feet with the truck pulling it and you make a wrong turn it can just ruin your trip because you might end up in some location that you just can't backup or it's just easy to be able to maneuver I must tell you that has happened I must admit it's happened more than once and I will definitely tell you it was miserable it was just an awful awful experience so from that we started trying to do some things to make sure that we could lay out the maps better so a couple tips here first of all we tried to use the Garmin I'd been a Garmin user for years and years and years and Garmin has a piece of software called base camp and base camp allows you to go out on your laptop and map out your destination the way you want to go and then plug that into your guard to go down the road but I will admit this as much as I want to use Basecamp it is just unruly piece of software so if Garmin is hearing hears this I want to come back to Garmin and I want to be able to use Basecamp but it's just it's just not a friendly piece of software and it's very hard to manipulate one of the reasons being that it's hard is if you're trying to set from destination a the destination B sometimes the way these GPS is or even Google Maps wants to be able to take you to that location maybe based on the fastest route or whatever algorithms are using but you may know that there's construction along the way or you want to avoid maybe high traffic in a specific area so what these devices do is allow you to set waypoints and the way you would set a waypoint is I know that there's a convenience store or an apartment or a tire store or some kind of a business that's right next to this exit and you can literally dot your route into a way that you want to be able to go and bypass these trouble areas those are called waypoints or set a rest area that you want to go to that's a waypoint Google allows you to do the same thing the downside with Google is if I'm sitting at my laptop and I put my map in without waypoints when I send it to my phone or my tablet it will reroute based on what it thinks best but if I put in waypoints it forces Google to take those routes so here's what my plans are today I'm going to show you how to use Google Maps Google Maps from a PC the reason I'm doing that is you've got a lot more flexibility to be able to move and set waypoints with a PC versus using a tablet or a phone it's much simpler then take that final map and take that link and email it to your phone or email it to your tablet however you want to be able to do it the nice thing about setting waypoints is Google cannot reroute and take those waypoints out and try to shorten your route or take you somewhere where you don't want to go it makes Google Maps amazing to use you force it and bend it too your will and your desires and you don't have to follow their algorithms on how you want to be able to go second to that even though you're going down the road and you're using your phone with Google it will still show you if you're getting into a particular area where there's been bad traffic if you're heading toward a big city and you're getting that real-time traffic information that makes it so very very nice but again waypoints then we have several other apps that we use that we keep online or available in the background that makes travel much much easier for rest stops and for gas stations etc etc and music you've got to have your tunes so we use that as well so I hope you find this very interesting and let me show you by starting with the Google map application on my PC and then we'll carry that forward and then I'll take you out into the truck and show you how we use it inside the truck before we start our destination so stay with me I think this is going to be very educational and you probably want to get you a sheet of paper and make some notes because it is pretty detailed but I think once you use this once or twice you'll absolutely love it from this point forward and I think it'll be difficult for you to go back to something like a Garmin or a TomTom or some other type of GPS device I know for me I don't want to go so let's uh let's head to the laptop and let me show you how we do this okay so we're gonna start off opening up my Chrome browser and I'm gonna put in Google Maps and as I shared earlier I'm going to bend Google Maps to my will very similar what you would do with a base camp and we talked about base camp earlier okay so I am going to start here where I'm at currently and beautiful FDR State Park I'm located right outside of Pine Mountain Georgia if you've not been to this location it's absolutely beautiful beautiful location pine mountains a quaint little town you have Callaway Gardens over here that's a lot of fun to go to as well we enjoy coming over here very much so this is going to be our start destination I'm going to click directions and I'm going to go ahead and move this to the top since this will be my beginning location now we're going to be heading up to the North Georgia Mountains and I've already been doing some research so we're going to be staying at this campground and I can and we're going to be driving up on a Sunday so we're going to be leaving early and we're gonna try to hit Atlanta probably on the 9:00 to 10:00 timeframe we've done this many times before but I do know I do not want to drag my fifth wheel through downtown Atlanta so we're going to be making some Waypoint changes to force the map and the directions in that area sure I could take this and drag it over and make it work in that fashion but the downside is and if you've ever attempted this before when I'm taking this from my PC to my phone or a tablet Google Maps will reroute there is not a fix that I know of I've done tons of research I've tried to find it I wish to goodness that Google would not reroute a saved directions but regardless of what you put in there it will do it but if you set waypoints locations along the route and force the reroute by Google then you will have better success with this so I'm gonna look at my map and from my travels I know that this highway 27 up to 185 is the direction I want to go it will run into IAT 5 up to Atlanta and since I've traveled through Atlanta many times before I know that I want to route around 285 and that is going to be my preference I can take the west route or the east route around 285 and 285 is going to be the direction I think that will be a little bit closer for me to be able to use so I want to take this bottom route in this direction and I'm going to find me something at an exit that is close by and I see I don't want to go up above 20 here because my fear is and Lent it will around me around 20 up in that direction I want to force the route to go at 285 at this location pre-pre going to 20 again this would be no different than if I was to do this and something like base camp so I'm gonna go up here to and exit and here's an exit and here is something very very close to that exit and I'm going to click on that location I'm gonna highlight the address and then I'm going to backspace and go back to my map I'm going to add a destination and I am going to move that destination here into the middle so I'm leaving the park I'm going into that location and if you look now look at what has happened exactly what I was hoping would occur I'm taking 85 to 285 it's showing this as a waypoint of course I will not be stopping stopping there I will bypass that and continue on and then it's going to take me up to 85 and that's exactly what I want to do this will later take me up to a split to nine eighty five and what I did is I called the campground ahead of time and said I'm gonna be taking this this route up to you what is the best way to be able to go and they said well just you know come through Atlanta I come up 85 to 9 85 and then take 129 exit 120 you go 129 take this exit right here and and come up that way that's the best way do not continue with what Google Maps and the Garmin will tell you and take this 52 up through Clermont that you see here that's a very windy narrow road and if you've got a big rig you won't be happy with that so again I'm gonna find me a waypoint and I'm not gonna pick something in this direction if you get too close it will just nothing more than loop your around and take you back up into this direction we want to go up a little ways here and find something up the road and this might be close enough here is a this gentleman's business right here will always up the road again I'm gonna click on it and highlight it I'm gonna backspace again this might seem like a little bit of work and it is a tad bit of work it's no different than any other type of planning but it's much simpler than trying to do this and something like you know the garmin basecamp product is just because it's just point and click and now i'm saying this is exactly what i want to have happen there's my exit 24 that they told me to take and I'll be coming up here and hitting 129 and that is going to take me directly up to the campground that will be going on so here's the great thing about it I have now bent or forced Google into this route if I had done nothing more than dragged these routes over then Google will do nothing more than when you send this to your phone take this beginning point in this beginning point and it would show that original route that I did when we go so I've done my route planning you know we're sitting at about I don't know five or six minutes it didn't take long I had a phone call ahead of time to find out exactly what exit would be the best to come up here in the best road to get to the campground I've done that I've traveled in this area enough that or even if I hadn't traveled in this area enough I would talk to friends and they would say do not go through downtown Atlanta it's very busy and if you're going to the east side of town then take the connector around the east if you're going the west side of town take the connector around the West such as we were going to up here and hitting 75 and going to something like Chattanooga or Nashville that would be the way that we would go but we're gonna bypass that now here's what we're going to do I'm now going to take this and click here on this bar I'll show that to you again this little menu bar and if you notice there is a share or embed button here and we are going to share this here's a link I'm gonna copy this link now and I'm going to email it and open this up with my phone and that will be the next thing that I'll be showing you so here's my phone and I'm gonna be using this as my navigation device so I'm gonna open up the mail link that I have and here is that link that I sent me I'm gonna click on that and then this will now automatically open up my maps it'll take just a second for the calculation to occur and now we have it and the interesting that you will think that you will see here as we are setting this up as there are those waypoints and where this has been forced to go to the route that I want to travel down the roads that I want to go to not the ones that Google thinks is best now I'll share this with you this is mid-afternoon that I'm doing this video and this would be another classic reason you can see the reds and so forth I do not want to travel through Atlanta any time other than maybe a Sunday morning or late Sunday evening oh my goodness I can't imagine that it's what I miss but a good Sunday morning it'll be basically trouble-free but the good news is is now I can I can go ahead and move forward with my directions and we are ready to start traveling and hitting north and this makes a great way to be able to make your travel just love it so we're out in the f-350 truck now and I'll show you how I use the phone and then I'm gonna give you one other option that I think you're going to find very very interesting so let me turn the camera around and I will show you how we actually use this inside the inside the truck and kind of make it hands-free and easy to use this is a this is a device that I purchased off of Amazon it's very very simple it fits virtually just about any modern cellphone this out there all of your current iPhones are your current Samsung is LG's etc it's really a nice little tool that you can buy and and and use to display your phone and give you good something good to see visually so I'll take this and just you know stick it in the window here and it has a suction cup that you place on it and you can kind of bend it to fit you whatever your specific needs are I'm going to take my cell phone now and turn it back on and I'm going to open up my maps and all the other things that I had and I'm gonna place it in here and of course I will take this and you know plug it in and charge it but I won't show that now and now I can go down the road as you can see here and as I Drive down the road you know it's right at the fingertips and of course Joan can reach over from the driver's side and she can open up you know any of the other types of things that we might have on there and you know there's the music she can make the music selection that she wants to be able to make and etc etc as I was showing and then of course go back to the go back to the the route that we were looking at so this is a very very handy easy-to-use option that we just really really enjoy using now let me show you one other item that I think that you'll find very very interesting sometimes other than using the phone we will use this device this is a Samsung Tab a I've got to share with you this is the 8 inch model I love it I love it I love it I use it all the time I use it inside the camper for news and YouTube and all these types of things it's a great device it's very very fast the screen resolution is just absolutely beautiful it does not this model the one that I purchased does not have a cellular modem in it so it is Wi-Fi only but that does not prevent us from being able to use it out on the road and I'll show you how but first of all we use a slightly different device than that mo this one is made by our Khan AR Kon again I'll put this in the show notes so wonderful provides a great great holder for these tablets and it's very firm I've hit very very hard bumps and it stays in place and it's very easy to be able to place in here and just like you know in it's a larger tablet that's 8 inch tablet compared to the phone you can see the the differences inside really makes looking at those maps fantastic well how do we use this on the road well we have a hotspot a being that we travel so much and I also need it for business we have a number of different hotspots but this is one of those now I'll just lay it up here I've already got it logged in for what we need I'll go in and just show you how quickly here is that map that's sitting in my gmail account and we'll pull that guy up and give him just a second to be able to set up and there we are we're ready to go you can see that looks just like it did before when we were looking at it on the phone and we've hit our preview and now we are ready to travel and it's the exact same format you know I'll take this guy here I'll plug him in to get him charged and it's the same functions that Joan was using earlier that you know if she needs to be able to you know find us you know a truckstop to go into then she can pull in up the truckstop application and we'll literally load these before we leave so that we can have all those truck stops you know preloaded for us to be able to determine where we want to pull out and then it's just simply push that little button hit the maps again and we're ready to go we also have an app here that I absolutely love it's called nav meter and nav meter is fantastic that I can set speed and altitude and direction or coordinates I use it just primarily for speed I'm going to turn it on manually and even though I'm not driving right now it will run in the bottom right hand corner you can also set altitude when you're going up in the mountains and it's kind of fun to watch that as well but again we will put this up and I have it set up to where it will be showing in that bottom right hand screen and as I pull up the maps and as we go down the road it's easier for me to look to my right and be able to see what our speeds are and make sure that we're going at a reasonable speed especially if all of a sudden we pop up at a school zone or something like that so this is a wonderful wonderful way to be able to do this I'll put a link in for this tablet if you're interested in getting it it's a fantastic tablet I think it's very reasonably priced it's got the latest you know the latest Android operating system on it and you know it's up to hundreds I mean it's right in the mid 100's it's absolutely a fantastic device well I hope you found that informative I know it's a little different than just punching in a coordinate inside of a garment and then taking off down the road or putting it into a TomTom and taking down the road but again sometimes our RV travels a little complex we have to make some twists and turns and avoid some things that you know like we know might be high bridges or things like that that we want to avoid let me mention this I'll also put this in the notes we use a Rand McNally truckers map we just bought the 2019 our other one was a was a little old I'll put the notes on how to get that anytime we put a route together we always go to that Rand McNally and look at the maps and make sure it's trucker friendly for us you know with a 40-foot fifth wheel that's 13 feet tall I want to avoid those low bridges and I want to make sure that you know if it's safer truckers that say for us so that's another tip that you might want to follow as well and again if the tom-toms the garments are those types of things are working for you fantastic don't stop using them but again if you're finding out that they're sending you in directions that you don't want to go I always call the campground ahead of time I'm coming up this direction what is the best direction to go to that way they can you know prevent you from going over low underpasses or going over some kind of a crazy bridge that's too small or making a turn through somebody's neighborhood that's just not RV friendly I always find that that works I look at the Google Maps and then I set my waypoints to make sure that I'm going in the direction I want to go and how handy is it to be able to have rest stops at your fingertips or be able to have your fuel stations for your big camper so you can pull in to get fuel or you know just get a bite to eat if that's what you're doing in a long trip and a good leg stretch if that's important as well and then having that little what I call the nav meter I down at the bottom that shows me my mileage as I'm going down the road so I can just quickly glance over to the right check the map check my speed it's just super handy I hope these tips have been very very informative so thank you as always for watching I love RV life I really appreciate it thank you so much for subscribing if you haven't click on the subscription button here at the bottom or at the end I'll give you some other locations that you might want to be able to look at our videos or subscribe go to our website we've got tons of things past blogs past videos we've got a an RV essential page on all they're interesting things that Joan and I use and purchase that make our RV travels much easier and much more enjoyable including the things that I talked about today so as always I love RV life and I hope you love RV life too [Music] you

Channel: I Love RV Life

Views: 46,611

Rating: 4.8821054 out of 5

Keywords: Jerry Neal, I love rv life, rv travel, 5th wheel travel, rv living, 5th wheel living, rv gps, best rv gps, graming rv gps, garmin gps, garmin rv, rv gps app, car gps, using google maps, maps and driving directions, driving maps

Id: XKo3_vnncsc

Length: 23min 40sec (1420 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 01 2018