Microsoft Streets and Trips

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jbriner

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Joined
Feb 23, 2013
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6
I just purchased MS&T for our planned trip from So. Indiana to Grand Canyon in May and although I am not a computer tech, I am soomewhat computer savy but I am having trouble grasping all the options on this program.  If any knowledgable person could spare a few moments and keystrokes, I would be very greatful.  I have started my trip routing by entering my starting location, all subsequent stops and my final destination. I also completed my "profile".  Now how do I get it to calculate daily stops so I know in what area to search for campgrounds? I have been a viewer of your boards since before we bought our 28' TT and have been so impressed with the quality of information and the eagerness of contributors to help one another. This will be our first BIG venture and I saw on the forum the mention of this software and thought it would be a valuable tool. Thank you for any help anyone can offer.
 
I have never used MS&T so I can't help you. I have always used Google maps. It is free and easy to use. I put in my starting destination and ending destination and it gives me three or four options for routes. I can change any route just by clicking and dragging. Then I look at the intended route and start checking Passport America for cheap places to stay along my route. I usually go about 200 miles a day. It is easy to estimate 200 miles. But I don't know what bells and whistles MS&T offers so it might be a much better option. I hope someone can enlighten me as to what the advantages it would have.
 
Hi, welcome to the forum. I had to ask my wife as she is the MS&T expert. She runs the program from here laptop while we are on the road.  You set your daily ending location in the Profile function by entering the the amount of HOURS you want to travel that day.  For instance if you want to travel 4 hours and stop, you would enter a starting time, and an ending time 4 hours later. The map will show a "moon" symbol on the route indicating the end of the travel day.  (The actual time you start driving doesn't really matter, it's the elapsed time between the start and end times that calculates the distance). 

Then you use the "find nearby places" button at the top on the menu bar.  The button is two little semi circles with a stick pin in the middle.  When you click that you can select the type of search you want. She uses "search from Point" and sets the search for a 5 mile radius from the point on the route.  She gets a list of places in that 5 mile radius. She can expand or shrink the search as she finds necessary. 

Then she will use the internet to refine the search.  One of our favorite site to search for campgrounds is  http://www.rvparkreviews.com/ . It is a site that is entirely made up of reviews of campgrounds by the RV'ers that stay there.  It is completely searchable by area and quite through.

Hope this helps, and I didn't confuse you too much!
 
Perhaps too late now, but you might have done better with the Trailer Life Road Trip Navigator, which combines the excellent Trailer Life Campground Guide with a North American map & route planner (navigator).  Not any better maps or routing than Streets 7 Trips, but it makes it easy to locate campgrounds near your route and planned stops.
 
Thanks for all your input. Yes, it is too late to try the Trailer Life Navigator but I will try the tips offered and see if I can figure this out. Thanks again.
 
We have been using S&T for 5 or 6 years and love it.  We do pretty much as SargeW suggested.

 
I've been using MS-S&T for about 9 years for route planning.  Since I never make CG reservations more than a few hours in advance, I don't much refer to it after the initial planning.  I've usually memorized the route by the time I start the trip and don't use it for detailed turn-by-turn navigation.

Sometimes I will download the route to my Garmin, if I'm totally unfamiliar with the roads, just to get detailed lane preference information at major intersections.
 
I use S&T myself, I do not, however, trust it to find my nightly overnight stop for me.. I just go with a quick search once I'm getting ready to call it a night.

I do have one suggestion.. on Route Planner panel there is a button at the bottom, I think it's titled MORE or MORE OPTIONS without looking, click on it and it brings up a pop-up.. One of the tabs in the pop up is SEGMENTS  click on that and choose (for each segment) Preferred roads.

I've gotten into some serious "I don't want to be here" roads by not doing that.

I have yet to figure out how to get it to default that way. (But then I did not know about a profile section, that may be new).
 
We use S&T a lot, mostly as a trip planner, not for road by road- turn by turn instructions.  I like the fact that we know how many miles we have traveled and I can do calculations on how many miles it is from place to place.  So ours is used more for overall route planning and decision making.  I don't do the "I only want to travel 4 hours today" mode.  I do more location to location. 

To create a route, click the "auto route planner"  (little car icon) and type in an address.  It will find the address and then ask you if you want to add this to your locations.  Click "yes".  Then type in another address and add that to your route.  Then you see "get directions"; click that and the route will appear on the map in blue with line by line directions.  You can short-cut all of this by putting push pins in at one location, then a push pin in at another location, click "route planner" and the blue line will appear on the map

You can also do a search (click the round circle with a pinpoint also call "find nearby places") around a certain location to find restaurants, shopping, points of interest etc.

Like Sarge's wife, I find our stopping points with S&T, go to rvparksreview.com and look up campgrounds.  I only do this if I need to make reservations.

Marsha~
 
John,

"Garmin Nuvi - the little Nuvi is always used as a sanity check for CoPilot while we are on the road and as a backup device"

I love it!!!  Tim has his smartphone GPS clipped to and running on a holding bracket right in front of the driver; and I have my Garmin Nuvi on the dash.  If they agree, we feel confident in the turn by turn directions.  If they don't then we cross our fingers toss a coin and go with the winner.... :eek:

Marsha~
 
John: It was due to your thorough explanation of how you incorporate MS&T into your route-planning that sold me on the product.  I think, thanks to everyone's help, I have just about mastered the basics.  I was up til 2:30 this morning making myself familiar with the various options, and I am NOT a night person! So far the only reservation I have made is GC Trailer Village for three nights.  I think for the one-night stops in between, we will go with a more on-the-fly approach.  But I am looking at Watchman for Zion and Coulter Bay at Grand Teton where we will spend more time. Then on to Yellowstone and Mt Rushmore and home, taking about 4-5 weeks in all.  Love to read of everyone's experiences. Appreciate all your help with MS&T. :)
 
jbriner said:
I am looking at Watchman for Zion and Coulter Bay at Grand Teton where we will spend more time.
IMHO Watchman is the best choice for Zion and Colter Bay is the best choice at the Tetons. Both are located where most of the action is.
 
Watchman has some dry camping sites and some electric only sites, so if you want electric, you might want to make the reservation so that you are assured of getting one.

Marsha~
 
Microsoft Streets & Trips is great way to plan your trip .  I use it on planning my route and stops on every trip we go on .
There are a few things that should be watched however .

When you are planing watch the routs it is sending you as it may not send you the way you would actually like to go and not necessarily the shortest way to your destination .

I have found that it is best to plot out the overall rout then fine tune it on the map . You may have to enter some stops that you are not actually stopping at to get it to go the way you want to go .
If you are doing this , just right click on towns , cities you want to go through then when the box comes up click"Route " and then " Add as stop"

For scheduling a stop for over night , right click on the campground you will be spending the night and when the box comes up again click " rout " then " add a stop " .  Then go up to the campground in the rout box on the left . " . Right click on the camp ground and when the box comes up click on " Scheduled stop "
You can set your times for arrival & departures by clicking " Options at the bottom of the page .

Another thing about MST . Don't Trust It Completely !!!! always carry a map with you .

( Example . )  I print maps of the crucial spots that I want detail about . Printing the map to the Virginian RV Resort in Jackson Wyoming it sent me through Jackson way out in the boonies .   

Bill
 
I use Streets & Trips.  Plan the route on it and transfer (my son will ball me out for using the wrong term) the trip segments to my Garmin Nuvi.
 
I am glad to read this thread. :)  I have Streets and Trips ( and Microsoft MapPoint) installed and had never even looked at them until I saw this thread.  MS allows me to legally install a bunch of software as part of my agreement with them and I just never got around to doing anything more than installing and activating those programs.

I have just put together a trip plan for one of my clients  (I live in Maine and my client is in Virginia) and it looks like I can shave some travel time off my trip and I have located several key stopping areas for fuel and coffee).

Thanks to everyone for waking me up enough to check out Streets and Trips.  I will still use my GPS for quickie things but I subscribe to the premise that it is easier to modify an existing plan that to create one on the fly... ;)
 
I love Streets and Trips and use it almost daily and when on a travel day, it is loaded up and running in my laptop on the console, in case I need to look at something more detailed than trying to zoom in on a 3 inch GPS screen. Plus if needed I can plug my handheld GPS into my laptop and Streets and Trips will recognize it and my route will be tracked...

I find it to be an invaluable planning tool....I must have a zillion trips saved on my computer, plus I use the mileage for my daily log. I have to use the odometer off my GPS since the one in the truck is broken....

Explore Streets and Trips it is a good one...

Jim

 
I've been using S&T for a number of years. My favorite feature is in the Route Planner under the "Segments" tab. Since I plan to stay completely off freeways and focus on older highways, I click on the preferred road types button and set "Interstates and Limited Access" to "Dislike." This makes my directions always drop to US and State highways. Makes for a much more pleasant trip since I'm not trying to get somewhere or set long-distance driving records.
 
I?m another one that uses S&T. I use it to plan out the trip and then use a Holux GR 213U GPS receiver to use it for turn by turn navigation. I have my laptop mounted by the dash so it works great. I can also use S&T to look up different spots on the map (when parked of course) without worrying about internet access. I used it last summer on a 7k mile trip through AK and it worked fine. The best way I found for getting used to it is just using it around town where you are familiar with the easiest routes. Then you can compare the suggestions it gives you and see how well the turn by turn is working for you. I suggest the Holux over the one sold by Microsoft as the Holux is definitely a better GPS. It also comes with a 6? cord so it reaches the windshield in an Rv quite easily from where your laptop would be. There are a lot of apps you can use with S&T such as low bridge clearance alerts etc and the more you use it the easier it becomes.
 

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