Despite the excellent route planning videos and posts by Craig and others, I still found myself sometimes confused and frustrated when I first tried to get serious about route planning and GPS navigation for motorcycle travel.  While searching for answers, I found plenty of posts in various forums expressing frustrations similar to mine with terminology, available tools and incompatibilities between them despite the supposedly standard GPX file format. 

 

Since then, I’ve spent some time digging for info, learning from Craig and others, and experimenting.  I’m no expert, but I figured I’d share what I think I’ve figured out in the hope that it helps others avoid some of the frustration.  The content is too long for a post, so I put it into a pdf.  It provides a brief general explanation of GPS routes and tracks, oriented toward the planning motorcycle traveler, followed, as an example, by a specific discussion of some issues behind converting a route planned with the Rever application on the web to a route suitable for navigation with a Garmin zumo XT. 

 

This is not a "How To".  See Craig's Using REVER and MRA Route Planner to Create GPS Routes for that.