Atlantic Coast Route/Garmin/Macs/Waypoints Question

[NOLA]

Following up on my previous posts, I ended up purchasing the Garmin 60CSX for my ACA Atlantic Coast tour.  I have purchased and installed City Navigator North America NT (2009), which to my surprise included Road Trip and Mapinstall (i.e. I did not have to download these from the Garmin site).  I am now downloading the East Coast maps from my Mac onto the Garmin 60CSX.   My question is:  What are the next steps required to download the Atlantic Coast Route waypoints from the ACA site onto the GPS so I can see and use them?  The user guide on the ACA site seems to be a guide to creating personal waypoints/routes as opposed to downloading preset routes to my GPS (but I could be wrong).  Any help would be appreciated -- I am leaving soon!   

[NOLA]

Oops.  Forgot to mention that I also have map manager installed.  The waypoints seem to require map source.  Do I need to install that?  As it is, I can't seem to download the waypoints from the aca website using what I have.

[NOLA]

One more thing - is map source compatible with a Mac?  It does not appear that it is so am I out of luck using my Mac for this process?

[FredHiltz]

... I am now downloading the East Coast maps from my Mac onto the Garmin 60CSX.   My question is:  What are the next steps required to download the Atlantic Coast Route waypoints from the ACA site onto the GPS so I can see and use them?  The user guide on the ACA site seems to be a guide to creating personal waypoints/routes as opposed to downloading preset routes to my GPS (but I could be wrong).  Any help would be appreciated -- I am leaving soon! 

The GPS Data User Guide gives step-by-step instructions on downloading the waypoints from the ACA site and loading them into your GPSR. Please write back if any part of these is difficult to understand. We can always improve the user guide.

You can ride with the given waypoints and routes if you wish. The GPS Data User Guide points out that changing the waypoint names to something more meaningful to you is valuable, and that the given routes are not likely to match your days' rides. You will get better navigation if you customize them to fit your riding.

Fred

[FredHiltz]

... The waypoints seem to require map source.  Do I need to install that?  As it is, I can't seem to download the waypoints from the aca website using what I have.

Use any browser to download the waypoint files. http://www.adventurecycling.org/routes/gps.cfm summarizes how to use the files and refers you to the GPS Data User Guide for a fuller discussion of using MapSource and several other programs, some free, to work with the waypoints.

Fred

[FredHiltz]

One more thing - is map source compatible with a Mac?  It does not appear that it is so am I out of luck using my Mac for this process?

http://www.adventurecycling.org/forums/index.php?topic=5781.0 discusses Garmin software for the Mac.

Fred

[blueontop]

Am I missing something?  I have an Intel Mac, have unzipped the ACA Atlantic Coast waypoints, have tried every possible way in Garmin's BaseCamp to get a straight-forward routing from ACA's waypoints, to no avail.  If I use the route option of ACA's data, I can't copy and paste waypoints onto a day's route without it "sorting" the waypoints and messing up route.  If I try to create a route by copying and pasting ACA's waypoints, the route is NOT straightforward, but jogs this way and that to hit every campground, gas station, etc.  Is there a way to JUST get the waypoints in which a direction is changed?  I'm working with waypoints around Boston so I realize there are options, but isn't there an easy way to simple get directional changes?

Appreciate any and all help in solving this frustrating problem.  By the way, I'm working with a Garmin 705, which isn't the problem.  The problem is in how to organize ACA's waypoints into a sensible format.

Melissa Norton

[FredHiltz]

... I can't copy and paste waypoints onto a day's route without it "sorting" the waypoints and messing up route.  If I try to create a route by copying and pasting ACA's waypoints, the route is NOT straightforward, but jogs this way and that to hit every campground, gas station, etc.  Is there a way to JUST get the waypoints in which a direction is changed? ...

Hi Melissa,

The ACA files contain GPS routes as well as waypoints. The GPS routes were made by connecting those waypoints that lie on the cycling route. If you work with the GPS routes, you can avoid the other waypoints, which mark points of interest not on the cycling route.

It is not clear just what BaseCamp is doing "sorting" the waypoints. In alphabetical order, the waypoints follow the same direction of riding as the paper map. Do you have the GPS Data User Guide? If not, get it from the web site where you downloaded the waypoint files. It says a lot more about the alphabetic naming of the waypoints.

Fred