On Friday I went down to Deland, Fl to get my grandfather who was on a fishing trip down there.

When I was first asked about going down there to get him I viewed the map in OpenStreetMap and made some corrections to the fish camp he was staying at there, and made all the appropriate tags.

In the past I have tried to use Osmand+ to route me places and have found it to be all but useless for getting directions. Since I didn’t have any time frame I needed to make it down there I decided I would try the latest version to see how it would perform.

Everything seemed to go very smoothly, thought I am very sure that the route it took me was not the best. It had me get off after Gainseville, drive east of town, and then head South. I took its advice since I like taking back-roads when I’m not pressed for time.

About two miles from my destination it tried to take me down a road that ran into a private government area that was blocked off by a fence. I tried Google Maps and it was doing the exact same thing.

I drove just a few hundred feet past that wrong turn and it rerouted me the correct way. At my destination I fixed the OSM mapping and filed a bug with Google Maps. I also walked around the fish camp and made updates based off of observations that could not be easily made from satellite imagery.

I was very happy with the capabilities of Osmand’s offline routing mode. The most recent version of the offline maps for Florida did not have the fixes I had made for the fish camp the previous week, but that was alright as prioprietary maps can take years to have updates and receiving the updates can be costly.