I’ll never forget when we were traveling in New Mexico and asked Google Maps to plot our course from Carlsbad to Alamogordo near White Sands National Park. I didn’t understand why it was telling us to go many miles out of our way to the north, then around and down. When I looked at the map I saw a much more direct route – thru Cloudcroft. Let’s go that way.
Well, we learned the hard way. That is a very steep climb up and an even steeper trudge down. We’d already burned one set of brakes, we had to be very careful not to burn another.
That was some years ago and we didn’t have the separate programs that would tell us what the elevation was. Today it is super simple, right in Google Maps. Just tell Google Maps that you’re on a bicycle and it adds a panel to the left sidebar with the elevation changes along the selected route. Make sure to select the car once as well, just to check that the route is the same. The elevation profile will only show up when you have bicycle selected.
To learn more about navigating with Google Maps, see our Member Learning Guide:
From 2003-2017 she traveled the country in an RV with her husband, Jim offering technology seminars at RV rallies, computer clubs, and senior centers. Now they travel the world and continue teaching on their website, GeeksOnTour.com, over Zoom, and on their YouTube channel. Specializing in the use of Google Photos, Chris teaches people how to get control of the thousands of photos and videos taken with both phones and cameras these days. She is designated by Google as a Diamond leve Product Expert for Google Photos.
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I never knew that Google maps gives the altitude. Thanks for this info!! Good to know.