route planning software

[fenrisx]

I'm going to be making my Biannual Georgia Trip in March, and I'm wondering if there's a good program that can plan a route, and pull in POI that are near the route. I usually just print the direction from Google Maps, and follow that. Then just look for road signs for places we might want to eat at, etc.

This backfired on my last trip up from Georgia because the wife and I were wanting to eat at Krystal's one last time before we made it back to Minnesota. I look on their website and it said they had them in Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. So, as we passed the first one we seen in Tennessee we were just going to wait until the next one. Well.. we never seen another through the rest of the trip through Tennessee, and we never seen any through Kentucky.

So.. I'm looking for something that will look at our route, and then allow me to located all of the Krystal's on the route... or whatever it might be. Then save them as POI.

I have a Garmin Nuvi 255, but using that to locate places will easily take you pretty far off your route, or turn you around. I plan on using it the trip down this time just to keep track of my actual mileage vs. what my ODO is showing, but I could also us it instead of the printed direction. I could just load the route w/ POI onto it I think.

I'm updating it to the 2011 maps as we speak using an SD card, and I'm hoping I can load routes this way also.. (I don't have the USB cable to for sure be able to do that.)

[corax]

while it won't pull POIs from near your route, check POI-Factory.com and search for whatever you may be looking for along the way (Offbeat Tourist Attractions, specific restaurant, etc). Save all the files you may want into one folder and use Garmin's POI Loader to upload to your Nuvi. The files will show up under WHERE TO / EXTRAS and will act like a regular POI