ride mapping- food and water?

[Becky]

Is anyone familiar with a ride mapping program or website that will overlay convenience store (etc.) locations? DH and I have done unsupported centuries before, but they were in areas that we knew reasonably well, including where the gas stations and C-stores were. Now I'm looking to branch out a little further, using routes posted on sites like RidewithGPS.com and Mapmyride.com. But these are some rural areas and I can't safely assume that there's going to be a place to get water on the ride route.

Is there a way to do this in a Garmin Edge 705? I looked and couldn't find it in the settings menu.

Many thanks in advance!

[OakLeaf]

If you have City Navigator maps in your 705, you have the same POIs as the car GPS.

Menu>Where To?>Find Places> then you can choose "Gas Station," "Food and Drink," or if you want to find by name, go to Others>All Categories> then spell the name.

Now, that said, what's "nearby" might be a good bit out of the way by bicycle, and my experience in the car with DH's Garmin GPS is that the database of gas stations is not very up-to-date, even with the latest maps. So I would plan ahead, search on the web for businesses in towns that your route passes through, and if you'll be riding on a Sunday, make sure they'll be open.

[Becky]

Oak- thanks. I had forgotten about "Where To". Is there a way to make it display on the map without typing in the name of a town? Some of the roads that I'd like to use aren't really passing through towns or villages.... I've been doing the web search thing, but I was hoping that there was a better way.

I have the same concern about things being up to date. I work with the petroleum retail industry, and there's been a real decline in the number of facilities in rural areas, especially those not owned by large regional marketers.

[OakLeaf]

I've got mine in my hand right now because I've never actually used that feature.

It appears to work just like it does on the car GPS. I selected "Gas Station" and it gives me a list of 50 gas stations in order of proximity, and it also says what direction (as the crow flies) each one is from my current location.

Select one and it gives the address and the option to save the location, show it on a map or navigate to it. If I show it on the map, clicking the Mode button takes me back to the window where I can choose to navigate to it. Don't have to choose a city at all.



It's funny you say about rural areas. My experience is that around home, where there might be one or two gas stations in an area that has very little environmental monitoring or regulation, they're likely to stay open. People need to buy gas because they live there and it's 10-20 miles to the next gas station (or any other place to buy beer and chips), and there's no one making the station replace their 30-year-old tanks.

Where we've had the most experiences of gas stations not being where the GPS said they were is in New Jersey within a 20-mile radius of New York City. Happened several times in congested south Florida, too.


I do always make sure I have at least $2 in singles or coins in my jersey pocket in case I get to somewhere that the store is closed but there's a pop machine outside. Sometimes it's more than $1 nowadays.

A couple of weeks ago I swiped water from a hose outside a church. I paid for that sin though because the water tasted AWFUL (and yes I did let it run long enough to clear the hose).