Maps! Paper ones. Anyone still use them?

Both : Gps while riding and maps when not

I always have my paper maps with me.
And I also bring a pair of readers, to "zoom in" on the fine details!
;-)

P.S. I never "zoom in" while riding.

Ikraus:

For times off the bike, a lighted map reading light works wonders. When on the bike, the pair of readers you normally use won't be right, because you choose them for 12" reading distance. Using myself as an example, I keep pairs of 2.25 for normal use, but on the bike or when driving, I use 1.75s. This second strength is just right for reading things at the "close-up" distances typical of driving or riding, like gauges and route lists, which is more like 24" distance from your eye. I buy my readers included in polarized sun glasses. At night, I use my regular progressive lens eye glasses, which work at any distance from what I'm trying to see clearly.

I own and use a GPS but am still a fan of paper maps. I don't really utilize my GPS to its fullest potential. I don't like to plan detailed routes so I have never actually entered a detailed route in one and followed it. I know the general area and direction I want to go, maybe the final destination...maybe not, so I tend to wing things on the fly. I've been known to head out for Wisconsin and end up in New York...on purpose of course. I mostly use the GPS to help me find my way to a familiar spot once I've wandered off the beaten path. It allows me to "get lost" and then found. Being an older guy with a bit of romanticism, maps hold a nostalgic magic for me. A roadside, a hot cup of coffee and a paper map...my kind of ride.

Shep, You are so right ! My kind of ride.

I use both maps and gps. I have a compass mounted on my bike. Even when I’m using the gps, there is a map on the tank bag. I like to wander, as in turn in some random direction at some random road or track. Some of the best times and places are when I have been totally lost. But if I need to get home or to a specific spot after getting lost, the gps is easiest. Press the home button and go. Maps let me plan complicated multi week routes, gps makes it easy to follow those routes while seeing the world around me. And most importantly, my gps is programmed with a woman’s voice, so I can easily ignore her.

Definitely - both as backup for the electronics and to give me a better overall view of the area. Hard to know what to wander towards with a GPS.

Glad to see I'm not the only dude with hand scribbled directions on his bike.

KLR owner, so I forgo the massive financial commitment of 3×5 index cards and just apply a strip of white athletic tape directly on my tank. On it in sharpie are distance to, direction of, and name of next turn. I do a couple hundred miles at a time and change them during fillup/breaks. Releases clean enough, basically rain and wind proof, multi-use, and the price is right.

Short hand is easy for me to follow, easy to read at speed, distance markers keep me tuned in to fuel status. No guage on my portly japanese girlfriend.

Also carry paper atlas, tablet running OSMAND, handheld gps, and I phone. Two is one, one is none.

Spot on! GPS is all well and good, but you can't spread your GPS unit across the table to pick out a route while you're sipping your coffee.

Well, I suppose you could, if you broke the unit into many little pieces, but that would rather defeat the purpose of having a GPS, wouldn't it?

I am 69 last month. I have been a map person all my life. Even as a child. I study them carefully before long trips. Particularly out west when I'm looking to try obscure dirt roads through remote landscapes. Then I'll go to my laptop and study the route through my 'basecamp' app. It uses satellite views as well as map views. After that if it looks like a path I can ride, I'll convert the desired route to tracks on my basecamp and load the tracks into my GPS. Then I'll go ride the tracks and see what happens. My GPS will trace new tracks to correct any imperfections to the tracks I created manually on basecamp. But while I'm doing all that, I still carry a paper map with me. AAA maps are handy because they are compact and have forest service roads and such. If the AAA map isn't enough I'll take a Benchmark or DeLorme map book.

I don't really use a GPS other than on my motorcycles. My iPhone GPS is enough for driving around. My wife, on the other hand, has to use a GPS almost all the time! Before there were GPS, she had a hard time finding anything. Back around 1987 we lived in Monterey CA. She went to Sonora to attend a relative's wedding. On her way home to Monterey she got on the wrong road somewhere around Escalon. She ended up in Fresno!

Interesting! in 2006 I rode the Alcan5000. I wear bifocals so I had special glasses made with a focal point to best read my roadbook and instruments (someting over 2 feet). I have since had all my glasses near vision focal point set that way. Then at the office I located my computer screens to match that focal point too. I have progressive lenses now but I still need a little over 2 feet distance for perfection.

Checking the map.

Always carry maps but I did start using a GPS a few years ago. Wouldn't be without one now. I over ride the GPS when I see an interesting road and it's nice having it get me back on track when I need to. The one thing I don't like about the GPS is not having the big picture of where the hell I am. My first trip with one I was riding to Florida. Someplace in the Carolinas I was trying to figure out where I was. Asked someone and I was in SC. Thought I was still in NC. That wouldn't have happened with maps only. The winding road feature on my TomTom finds good roads for me occasionally and my buddies Garmin has found awesome routes we'd never have found with maps (dirt mostly). I never leave for a trip without grabbing all the maps needed from my map pile though.
My eyesight sucks so that's always an issue with maps. I need bright sun and just the right distance to make out route numbers any more.

That happened to me when I intersected with (IIRC) US421. Little did I realized that the north / south signage reverses directions at Elizatethton. Most states would just call the whole route east / west. There are other exceptions direction to cardinal direction signage out there in other states, though.

I have a magnifier that is the same size and thickness as a credit card. Got it at a local office/art supply store.

My riding buddies and I use Dellorme Gazeteers,AKA the paper GPS.
Only one of us has a phone that can even function as a GPS.

Checking out my new Mid-Atlantic Backcountry Discovery Route map this morning.

Shearer Publishing. also offered different states...like Roads of Colorado...New Mexico...& Oklahoma
Sadly...they got bought up by the Mapsco company.... & while Mapsco did make some improvements like slightly larger scale & road labeling.... their versions also got more busy trying to show too much info I think. The Shearer versions had very nice artwork on topography... but...the county road labels added on later editions were kinda small red ink
Shearer Roads artwork similar to Benchmark's Road & Recreation series atlasas...the same as Butler uses on their folding maps if I remember correctly
Way easier ta read than DeLorme Atlas & Gazetteer which is very busy with artwork

Easy ta tell the Mapsco Roads from Shearer Roads versions.... Mapsco having spiral wire binding...Shearer simple staples holding pages. I use the older Shearer myself

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Or trying to convince your riding buddy which route would be best. Zooming out to see entire route on a GPS is just painful. GPS is good for executing a planned route. Paper map is for planning.

Shearer map books are excellent, particularly for dual-sport riding. I have several. Much better than Delorme. I used my Oklahoma one so much that I had to buy another.