Garmin Gps Route Planning

Routing with a Garmin eTrex HCx?

I have a Garmin eTrex HCx that i’d like to use on my bike rides. To give an example for what exactly ill be using it for, im planning a trip from eastern minnesota to mount rushmore in south dakota (meaning there will be hundreds of directions). I’ve used google maps in the past before i had a gps to route me on safe roads using the cycling feature. I’m new at using a gps to get my way around on a bike, so i’m wondering what others do? (how to get the maps, how to make routes with hundreds of waypoints easily that transfer to the gps) right now i have the garmin city maps on a micro SD card and have no clue what to do with anything. Thanks a bunch!
-David

FYI: the rest of the name is important in some cases when talking about the eTrex family. Yours may be a Legend HCx or a Vista HCx.

I have been quite pleased with the little use I have made of using the bicycling routing with my Vista HCx.

I feel that purchasing the maps on a the microSD card is a mistake. If you buy them on the DVD, you get to use them in your computer AND load the relevant parts to a microSD card. You can even load parts from different maps (highway, topo, water) on the same card.
If the card dies, you just load it to another.
Loading the map onto the computer lets you use it for creating the routes.

Can you locate your waypoints on the base map that comes with mapsource? If so, you can just click and mark them there. That is the easiest way. That is where having the detailed map in the computer helps.

Otherwise, you are stuck marking them on the unit’s map and transferring them to the computer or getting coordinates from Google maps and pasting them into the computer.
Even if you don’t plan on using the computer to connect the waypoints into a rout, it is a good backup of your data.
You can use the routing function in your gps to connect the points into a route but it is tedious, especially if you are scrolling through hundreds of them.
You might want to figure out a system of encoded names so that finding specific points is easier.
Garmin makes a point of interest creator that you can use to add your waypoints into your GPS as POI and use the find function within it.

You need to compare your map to reality to see if there are any horrendous hiccups in it. I am surprised where they happen.

Most bike trails are not on the maps yet. I find this annoying and the only way I know around it is to mark entry and exit points on them and ignore the routing beeps while on the trail. Obviously, this takes research ahead of time to find them and mark the entry and exit points.

There is a good community in the Yahoo Etrex group that can help you more.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/etrex/

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