GPS Technology helps avoid Navigation Nightmares in winter!

After visiting with family and friends for the holidays, many full-timers are back on the road again in January, moving to new locales to explore and enjoy.

Driving through unfamiliar territory can bring the unexpected, especially during winter months.  A detour, a weather incident, or even an illness can cause a well-planned trip to turn into a navigation nightmare!

Fortunately, GPS technology can assist with many of these challenges.  Although car GPS has been around for some time, GPS devices designed specifically for larger-sized vehicles is fairly new.  And an RV is a very unique “larger sized” vehicle with legal and physical restrictions different than cars and even commercial trucks.  For instance, commercial trucks don’t carry propane, travel on back roads, or need dump stations.

Rand McNally, with its vast experience with car and truck navigation, most recently focused on RV-specific routing. The result?  The Rand McNally’s TripMaker® RVND™ GPS. The portable devices provide RV-specific routing as well as contain features and content to help with the unexpected, such as:

• User-set warnings for road changes such as sharp curves, dirt roads, border crossings, toll booths, speed limit changes.
• Listings of thousands of rest stops, truck stops and parks with specific amenities such as 24 hour pharmacies, dump stations, diesel fuel, and propane available.
• Listings of dealers for repair of your vehicle, hospitals, and pet emergency facilities with phone numbers.
• 3-D lane guidance feature providing advance notice of upcoming interchanges so that you can be in the correct lane ahead of time.
• Routing to any point using RV-appropriate routes with legal and physical restrictions.

This story was recently shared by RVer Judy Jones, of Kerrville, Texas.

“We were on the Blue Ridge Parkway and had a flat on the RV.    We stopped in Blowing Wind, NC and used our car GPS to find a tire store.  When we got there, it was closed and then used the GPS to get back to town.  It directed us to Blackberry Street to get back to the main highway.  Blackberry was not the road for us! It had steep grades -one we got stuck on and almost burned up our transmission.  It turned into a dirt road for a few miles of up and down and then “a tunnel” which was narrow and low.  A friendly neighbor came out and was amazed that we were on Blackberry Road because no RV should be pulled on that road.  He helped us measure and we slowly made it through the tunnel.

Now we own a Rand McNally® TripMaker® GPS, which kept us out of trouble on our last trip.”

For more information on Rand McNally RV GPS visit www.randmcnally.com/rvgps.