4 ms·

Yeah, even though I grew up looking at maps and even drawing them for fun on graph paper when I was a kid, it has taken me a very long time to get to the point

Yeah, even though I grew up looking at maps and even drawing them for fun on graph paper when I was a kid, it has taken me a very long time to get to the point where I can navigate by map instead of step by step directions. Living in the Boston area for a few years in my 20s before GPS nav was readily available definitely helped, as one wrong turn might easily wind up with you being somewhere you've never been before, and the only way back is to look at a map. I had a few very dog eared pages of the same atlas that a lot of people used back then. I've spent a lot of time on the bike and skis looking at maps in Trailforks over the last few years. That has helped as well. It's fun to spend a lot of time in the woods and start to build a sense of location based on your surroundings. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/living-with-no-sense-of-direction/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/living-wit...

c0nsumer 3y ago
When it gets really fun is when Trailforks is wrong... I'm trying to get that fixed with a State Rec Area in northern Michigan. Trailforks was drawn, years ago, with the old/unofficial/local names of a bunch of bandit trails. Since then the state has closed a couple trails, officially recognized others, names have become standardized, and an official map has been developed. Now Trailforks doesn't match the official map nor the on-the-ground signage. But the level of change needed is beyond what a normal user can do, and I'm struggling to get an admin to make the changes. In the mean time, when I was there a couple weeks ago I helped three separate groups that were profoundly lost because they thought they were in one place (per Trailforks) but none of the signage matched what they thought. It was the whole bad-data-is-worse-than-no-data problem. If you want to see this for yourself, compare these two: https://www.trailforks.com/region/harlow-lake/ https://www.trailforks.com/region/harlow-lake/ https://www2.dnr.state.mi.us/publications/pdfs/RecreationCamping/little_presque_isle_harlow_lake.pdf https://www2.dnr.state.mi.us/publications/pdfs/RecreationCam...
- TYPE_FASTER 3y ago
  I'm hoping to move to something like OrganicMaps [0], now that it supports importing GPX files. [0] https://organicmaps.app https://organicmaps.app
  - c0nsumer 3y ago
    I use OsmAnd myself, and my main recommendation for folks is to use Gaia because it's... easier and less nerd knobby. But where OSM falls short is in tagging of mountain bike trails. Missing tags, no visualizers for contextual data like difficulty or route coloring on trail. Not to mention directionality on one-way trails, recommended (but not required) directions, the desire for showing routes on non-loop systems... etc. Personally when navigating I use a combination of OsmAnd, TrailForks (carefully), and some sort of copy of the trail system's print map. This usually does me well. I'm also working on a structure like this, which I hope to eventually use as an easy way to take OSM MTB trail data and present it on a slippy map, but it's still very much a casual side project / WIP: https://trailmaps.app/ramba https://trailmaps.app/ramba

c0nsumer 3y ago

When it gets really fun is when Trailforks is wrong... I'm trying to get that fixed with a State Rec Area in northern Michigan. Trailforks was drawn, years ago, with the old/unofficial/local names of a bunch of bandit trails. Since then the state has closed a couple trails, officially recognized others, names have become standardized, and an official map has been developed. Now Trailforks doesn't match the official map nor the on-the-ground signage. But the level of change needed is beyond what a normal user can do, and I'm struggling to get an admin to make the changes. In the mean time, when I was there a couple weeks ago I helped three separate groups that were profoundly lost because they thought they were in one place (per Trailforks) but none of the signage matched what they thought. It was the whole bad-data-is-worse-than-no-data problem. If you want to see this for yourself, compare these two: https://www.trailforks.com/region/harlow-lake/ https://www.trailforks.com/region/harlow-lake/ https://www2.dnr.state.mi.us/publications/pdfs/RecreationCamping/little_presque_isle_harlow_lake.pdf https://www2.dnr.state.mi.us/publications/pdfs/RecreationCam...

TYPE_FASTER 3y ago
I'm hoping to move to something like OrganicMaps [0], now that it supports importing GPX files. [0] https://organicmaps.app https://organicmaps.app
- c0nsumer 3y ago
  I use OsmAnd myself, and my main recommendation for folks is to use Gaia because it's... easier and less nerd knobby. But where OSM falls short is in tagging of mountain bike trails. Missing tags, no visualizers for contextual data like difficulty or route coloring on trail. Not to mention directionality on one-way trails, recommended (but not required) directions, the desire for showing routes on non-loop systems... etc. Personally when navigating I use a combination of OsmAnd, TrailForks (carefully), and some sort of copy of the trail system's print map. This usually does me well. I'm also working on a structure like this, which I hope to eventually use as an easy way to take OSM MTB trail data and present it on a slippy map, but it's still very much a casual side project / WIP: https://trailmaps.app/ramba https://trailmaps.app/ramba