Playing with my latest toy, a 5" screen no-name GPS direct from China. I've managed to successfully create routes in Google Maps then downloading them as a kml file into the GPS which uses iGO8 software. I learned quickly that there seems to be a "battle" between the route I want to run and the route the GPS automatically plans for the "fastest" or "shortest"...or whatever...route that it wants to run. Quickly wising up, I started to put in a bunch of waypoints into the Google map to "force" the GPS to follow the route I wanted to go on. (Keep in mind at this point in time these routes are strictly road-based.) Essentially I started placing waypoints at about the mid-point of road sections I wanted to travel. This was a huge improvement, but unfortunately the route I planned went in a big circle from Hamilton-Caledonia-Port Colborne-Niagara and then weaved its way up and down the escarpment back up to Hamilton. This formed (in Google anyway) a huge loop which once downloaded into the GPS got totally messed up as the GPS found areas where it was "faster" to short circuit the loop back and forth. I've tried changing the routing choices in the GPS, (fast, economical, easy, shortest) to no avail. Any tips on how to layout the route to force the GPS to take the (rather illogical) route I'm trying to run? Maybe breaking up the route into (something like) 4 separate routes instead of the single route I'm working with now? That would mean I'd have to stop along the way and load the next route, which is no big deal. Seems to me that between Google maps settings, placement of waypoints and GPS settings there's got to be an easier way than I've been trying so far. Edit: OK, learned from my mistakes. When adding new waypoints to "force" the route in the GPS, I'd added in new waypoints in the midst of the old original ones. While they show up sequentially on the map they are out of order in the list of waypoints. This has the GPS trying to go from waypoint 65 to waypoint 66 when 66 was actually mingled in between 19 and 20. So it routed back between 19 and 20 then went cross-country again to make it back to 67. Organizing the waypoints correctly in Google maps has fixed that problem and simplified the route, which now seems to actually follow the roads I want it to. I'm about to find out next what happens when I try routing waypoints as a bicycle in Google maps and see if my GPS routing will follow it.
