August Newsletter
Welcome
This summer, we explored many new roads and will be bringing them to you shortly, including routes through New Hampshire’s White Mountains. Join us on Facebook or Bluesky for all of our latest drives and news.
We’ve also been hard at work expanding the myscenicdrives.com Road Trip Planner. Thousands of people have used it already to plan customized adventures since its launch in June 2011. If you haven’t checked it out yet, please do! Over the last two months, we’ve added fabulous new features, many of which have been suggested by users letting us know what they need to make road trip planning simple and fun. Learn more in our New Road Trip Planner Features.
It’s hard to believe that autumn is just around the corner. As the cooler weather sets in, nothing is more dazzling than the colors of the fall foliage. Enjoy it with a day trip or spontaneous weekend getaway.
Keep those comments and suggestions coming! We love hearing from you!
New Road Trip Planner Features
The perfect road trip is now at your fingertips with the release of our Mobile Road Trip Planner and other great features.
Mobile Road Trip Planner
Our new mobile Road Trip Planner offers all the features you love in our desktop version, slimmed down to a full-screen, touch-friendly interface in your web browser. Now you can plan, edit, share, and upload GPS directions on the go with no software installation or updates.
We have optimized some features for the mobile experience. Highlights are:
- You can now use our GPS directions on your phone’s Google Maps Mobile application. In the Export Maps Menu, we’ve added a new “Provide Direct Links” checkbox, which when selected, will allow you to copy the GPS file links to your mobile phone. You can read more about that below.
- We’ve also added the “Follow Me” feature. Using your phone’s GPS, your location will be highlighted on the map. This allows you to quickly know where you are without adding your location as stop.
Route Optimizer
With so many great stops, planning the ideal route can be complicated. Using our new Route Optimizer, we can determine the best route that connects all of your stops and update your Road Trip Plan to avoid backtracking, save time and gas.
This feature can be accessed from the Map menu, and of course you can override or change as fits your trip best.
GPS File Format Updates
GPS devices are a valuable asset to hitting the road and we’ve now made it easier to load our routes onto your devices.
We have added the ability to download the GPS files directly into applications such as the Google Maps Mobile application. Prior to this update, you could only access the GPS files if you login, but now, if you enable the “Offsite GPS Support”, you can access the directions in such applications. The easiest way to enable this feature is to Export to GPS and selected the “Direct Link” option.
Many of the new TomTom devices do not have support for Itineraries. For these devices, we have added TomTom Place of Interest (OV2) support. Simply select it as an export format, load it onto your TomTom via MyTomTom, and configure your route from those places of interest. Best of all, this feature is available for all of our scenic drives! TomTom will soon be releasing a new application that will make this even easier. Keep an eye out for the software update in the next few weeks.
Turn-by-Turn Printable Maps
GPS devices are great, but often there’s nothing like having a printed copy of the directions. We made a few changes to use less paper and save trees and added Turn-by-Turn Maps to help guide you. When selected in Print Options, the Turn-by-Turn Maps and Directions will create a small map with text directions below for each turn of your trip. The map provides some context of the surrounding area.
Time Zone Detection
If you are taking a cross-country excursion, you may be passing through time zones. One of our latest features is Time Zone Detection. In all of our directions, if you cross a time zone, it will be mentioned.
Note: If you are planning a trip that will occur during Daylights Savings or back, we recommend you set the date for your trip in your Trip Properties to ensure schedule is accurate.
Find Nearby Drives, Outdoor Recreation, and Activities
Another new feature is to locate nearby Scenic Drives, Outdoor Recreation, and other Activities along your selected route. This feature is similar to Find Nearby Places of Interest but instead of focusing on all the content in one area, it allows you to search specific content along your entire route. This is a great way to find those not-to-be-missed activities along your route, and as myscenicdrives.com continues to grow, this experience will only get richer!
Get inspiration from Pictures
Pictures are worth a thousand words. Trying to decide between routes or choose stops along the way? Panoramio Pictures are now available from the Map menu where you can see thousands of photos submitted from people who have been there.
Hotels for You
As always, same great rates and no booking fees, but we have a new and improved hotel finder in the road trip planner with great features such as remembering the settings from your last hotel search, the ability to quickly see how far hotels are from your selected route, and finding vacancies in nearby towns.
Choosing the right hotel requires some filtering. We’ve just added the ability to search by Amenity, making it simple to find a hotel with a pool, complimentary breakfast, pet-friendly, and more.
Foreign currency exchange rates on credit cards are not fun. To help our Canadian users avoid additional charges, we have just released the ability to book hotels in Canadian Dollars. For now, this service is only available on hotel purchases.
Set your Trip Dates
You can now set your trip dates using a calendar and your itinerary will have calendar days associated with it, making planning that much easier. Configure dates under the Trip Properties.
Take it Day by Day
We’ve added a few features to our daily itineraries which allow more flexibility.
First, you can display an icon on the map showing where you will be spending each night. At a glance, you can see how close or far you are, offering the opportunity to make changes if necessary.
We also added the ability to expand and collapse the days and directions in your itinerary, allowing you to quickly jump from one day to another.
You can also set the Driving Times of each day or specify a Flexibility Time under General Properties. Using this feature, if your next destination is a short distance away from your desired driving time per day, our Road Trip Planner will include the extra driving time for that day.
Improved Trip Sharing Wizard
Want to share your trip on Facebook, Twitter, or another Social Network? Our improved Trip Sharing Wizard has been updated to allow you to post your trips safely and quickly. Full details are in documentation.
And more!
- Many enhancements to zooming, including double-click on the map to zoom, finer-grained zooming, zooming to the continental US, and more.
- Remove all destinations from a trip for advanced trip planning.
- Support for Kilometers and Road Preferences.
- Improved IPad support.
- Added Distance Circles to quickly gauge distances of on the map.
- Added support for searching for destinations by latitude and longitude (expressed in decimal or degrees, minutes and seconds).
Site Features
Facebook Apps
Visit our Facebook Page for new apps which allow you to explore some of our tools and features while on Facebook. Don’t forget to click “Like” to keep up-to-date with our latest news.
New Mobile Look
TomTom GPS Updates
As noted above, many of the new TomTom devices do not have support for Itineraries. For these devices, we have added TomTom Place of Interest (OV2) support. Simply select it as an export format, load it onto your TomTom via MyTomTom, and configure your route from those places of interest. Best of all, this feature is available for all of our scenic drives! TomTom will soon be releasing a new application that will make this even easier. Keep an eye out for the software update in the next few weeks.
Newest Drives
We are always releasing new scenic drives. If you want to know about them as they are released, subscribe to our newest drives list or follow us on Facebook, Bluesky, or by RSS.