My friends and I have been doing many GG rides over the last few years most hosted and the courses layed out by others. We are wanting to do more this year and start making up our own courses to try and when we started trying to do some rote planning using the planning tools on Garmin. We found that it was very hard to tell what was as what was not gravel. So other than personal knowledge what do you use to help weed out paved sections from your route planning without doing a lot of predriving or riding to find out? are there any maps that have paved and unpaved marked like i remember paper maps having as a kid in Colorado.
Check out gravelmap.com for some ideas. There is no easy way most people put the time in and scout out their routes. There are huge map databases online if you start digging.
Otherwise, some of the Gazetteer atlas maps (depending on which state you're looking at) show roads in different widths, and the skinniest roads tend to be gravel.
I usually use either the STRAVA route maker or Map My Ride. Switch the view to Satellite and you can usually tell the road surface. No lines or other paint markings and you're usually looking at dirt or gravel. You can also usually pick out gates/fences by the shadow to let you know what might be closed.
I do the same with RideWithGPS using the satellite view. State DOT maps (at least here in Georgia) are also very helpful, but sometimes the information is dated and roads have since been paved, abandoned or made private. Online tools help, but there's ultimately no substitute for eyeballs.
Im in Kansas city so we do some on the MO side and some on the KS side. I do the same thing as many of you using the aerial view to guess. I was just hoping that i was missing a setting or something that engaged the real map with paved, unpaved, b road, high Clarence 4x4 ect. like I remember from paper maps as a kid. just one more place tech has "improved" things I guess.
So for Kansas, it depends on where you are. The state breaks down road maintenance and mapping into 4 or 5 regions. Some regions have surface data, some don't.
Missouri I have down in my notes as a "maybe". What that probably means is that they have statewide data available, and that they keep track of something related to the surface type, but I haven't checked to see how good that data really is. It might be incomplete.
Ultimately, you can't count on any of these resources. Gravel roads wash out, are destroyed by heavy equipment, are re-routed or are closed. The last time I selected a route using Google Earth and maps, I thought I had found a perfect routing. When I went out to scout it in my Jeep, I found key parts of it overgrown with trees in the road itself and other parts intentionally blocked. Most of it was impassible by anything with wheels.
Here in Sweden we have NVDB, Nationella Väg DataBasen (National Road Data Base) https://nvdb2012.trafikverket.se/SeTransportnatverket# -In the right upper drop down menu ("Alla") choose "Väguppgifter" -Then choose"Slitlager" in the right lower drop down menu And, of course, zoom in enogh "Belagd" (red roads) are sealed "Grus" (green roads) are gravel
The best map source that I have found for my state (Colorado) is Benchmark Road and Recreation Atlas map books. The map legend makes it clear which roads are paved and non-paved. The map scale provides more detail than the Gazeteer brand of atlas books. Although the Benchmark Atlas books are not failsafe (as I have found errors), they are a great starting point for gravel ride route planning. Benchmark has several different states available. Check out: http://www.benchmarkmaps.com/
