How To Find Your Way While Traveling On Bicycle
Unless you are planning to ride to one of your favorite's haunts on your next bike tour, chances are you will need some kind of map to help you find your route.
Don't get caught up in thinking you will need some kind of fancy-schmancy bicycle-specific map for your tour. Having special bike lanes or trails is wonderful, but not essential for bike touring. In all actuality, all you will need is a regular road map to help you find your way.
I've toured in something like 25 countries in the past 30 years have never used anything more complicated than a standard road map. We look for back roads whenever possible and talk to local people to get their opinion. This method is perfectly adequate and many times provides far superior paths as local people tend to know what is around their area.
Many cycle tourists prefer the ease and simplicity of Adventure Cycling's maps. These are specialized maps created exclusively for bike tourists and guide you along remote, little-used back roads. They also indicate where you will find services bike tourists need - like grocery stores and bike shops. At this time, Adventure cycling has only designed routes in the USA.
Google Maps has recently introduced a new feature - bike routes. You can plug in where you want to start and where you hope to end up, and they will come up with a route for you. The route is based on little-used roads and looks to be a promising resource. At this point, it is too new to know how it will pan out, but certainly give it a try for your next tour.
If you have a GPS, you can use it. Many cyclists find they prefer the ease of plugging in a set of coordinates and then not having to think about it again, but a GPS is not essential in any way. You can decide for yourself if you think the investment will be worth it for you.
