Planning the Route

After the doctor gave me the go ahead I only had three weeks to get everything finalized.  My first task was to finish the details of the route.  I had already decided on the towns but now I had to get down to the actual turn by turn directions that would take to get me from A to B each day.  I ordered road maps but they weren’t detailed enough to show all the county highways and side streets that I would be taking.  I found the best way to survey potential routes was to use the Street Views on Google Maps.  I could zoom in on a specific road and see if it was busy or if it had a wide shoulder and then decide whether or not I wanted to take that road.  Over the next two weeks I spent hours poring over “The Google” mapping out every road, turn by turn, for each day. 

Street View of Highway 2 in the UP

After mapping out only the first few days I realized that the Upper Peninsula of Michigan was pretty sparse.  Not only are there very few roads up there but there are also very few towns.  This created a problem because I had to have a hotel and a restaurant every night.  To find suitable accommodations over the first four days the route turned out to be one 95 mile day then three back to back 120 mile days.  I was concerned this would be too much but I really didn’t have much choice.  After I got out of the Upper Peninsula I could go back to a more regular 100 mile a day route.   With some slight modifications I soon had a turn by turn map of each day that could be easily stored and modified along the way.  The next question was how to take each day’s route with me.

Map of all my final courses plotted in Garmin Connect (I had alternate routs for some days)

I decided to try out the map function on my Garmin 705 bike computer.  The computer has a built in GPS mapping system but I had never used it on such a scale before.  I started by testing a map that I had created online on the Garmin website.  I downloaded the map to my bike computer and the route showed up as a pink line that I could follow.  I did a few test runs over the next few days on my way to work and decided that it would work very well for guiding me to where I needed to go.  I was still nervous using something that was still relatively new to me but I felt confident that it would work.  I transferred all my routes onto the Garmin website and then downloaded them to my GPS Device.  By the time I was done I had 10 portable Garmin Files that I could bring up on my bike computer each day and follow from door to door.  Technology is a beautiful thing!