One of the club projects I worked on in 2020 was to offer turn-by-turn navigation capability for our drives through a Smartphone app. After testing several, we settled on Scenic, an iPhone app originally developed for motorcycle riders. The app has found a nice follow-ship, but it is not meant to replace the classic written driving directions. However, if you drive alone or with a navigator who’s prone to get car sick, it’s a big help. Today more than 90% of the club drives are covered by Scenic.

Scenic, besides being very popular, had two inherent problems: it did not support Android, and the app uses Open Source Maps, that are less accurate than Google Maps.

Triggered by Jeff Gasparitsch in early 2024, we started an evaluation of Ride with GPS. This app (from a Portland based company) supports both iOS and Android, and it uses Google Maps as several map options to generate routes.And it generates the cur sheets (driving directions), eliminating the multi hour effort to hand generate the driving directions. The only disadvantage of this app is that it does not (yet) support Apple Car Play / Android Auto. We tested the app on more than 20 drives in different terrain and also on the 2024 NW Passage. The app passed all tests and got very good ratings from the test users. In mid 2024 we purchased a club account and the app has now become the working horse for our route development.