How To Plan A Trip On The Florida Adventure Trail | Part 1

Opening Scenes foreign What's Up, Everyone! what's up everyone we hope you've been well and welcome to the Sunshine State Vikings editing Studio this is where the magic happens this is where we get to put together the videos so that we can share our adventures with you now we're here today at the studio because we want to put together a different type of video than we're used to it's one that we're hoping is going to help a lot of people out when they go to plan for a trip along the Florida Adventure Trail this video is bound to become very lengthy we're wanting to make it as detailed as possible we will probably end up making it into a two or three part video series but in any of these videos down in the description below all of the topics will be listed out with timestamps next to them those will also be laid out along the timeline as chapters feel free to skip around in the video to find the information you're looking for we welcome you to use these videos as a tool to play plan your trip along the Florida Adventure Trail also throughout the videos we're going to be referencing different resources we will do our best to put that information in the cards above as links as well as down in the description and if you're here and you do not yet know what the Florida Adventure Trail is well that is going to be our first topic which is going to be Researching The F.A.T. researching the Florida Adventure Trail put simply the Florida Adventure Trail is a 1200 mile route that was recently put together and released in the State of Florida as an over landing and adventure bike route navigating you through all of Florida's best off-road and adventuring areas we've recently just finished an eight-part video series with the intent of trying to inspire others to come and seek their own Adventures along this route now when we get into researching here we're going to be checking out three places the first of which is simply going to be floridaadventuretrail.com so let's head there now and check it out and so here we are at the home page of floridaadventuretrail.com this is a great place to start your research of the Florida Adventure Trail because it is the webpage that was created for the Florida Adventure Trail by Sunshine State adventureco up in the top right corner you have some tabs to be able to explore like the about tab this is where you can find some information about why the trail was created what the money for the trail goes to do in our community and a little bit more information about the Florida Adventure Trail itself like that it is a 1200 mile Overland and adventure bike route through the best parts of Florida the route is 60-ish percent unpaved roads with Scenic paved Roads connecting them together I would say that that is a true statement you can also check out the shop tab up in the top right there is some official merch available for the Florida Adventure Trail kind of like the adventure the official Adventure sticker here but this is where you could go to select to go in to buy the Florida Adventure Trail but this is where you can get your first overview of what all the 1200 mile route consists of this is an overview of the route it has all of these waypoints like places to camp places to stop food suggestions gas stops this is where you can go to purchase the Florida Adventure Trail GPX folder for twenty dollars but also on this webpage you can check out our next two resources that we want to guide you to the first one is going to be the Facebook icon in the top right corner and that is going to bring you to the Florida Advent Adventure Trail Facebook group it is a private group and it is just a little over 6 000 members but this is the official Facebook group created by Sunshine State Adventure Co there's a small questionnaire to enter the group it's basically just a stop Gap to make sure that you're actually wanting to join this group but this is where you can find a ton of good information you can see people's Rigs and the way uh they have their stuff set up you can see conditions about the trail you can see people's experiences on the trail people will often share their YouTube videos that they've created here with this Facebook group you can check out people's adventure bike setups there's questions and answers and there's just a ton of information here on the Facebook group you also have from time to time John birkmeyer the creator of the trail with with Sunshine State Adventure Co he will post information about the trail like this one here is welcoming new members of the our new members to the fat group just a lot of good information here and this is one of The Inspirations for why we wanted to make the video is because we have seen a ton of questions be asked in this Facebook group and we wanted to try to help out answering those questions with this video back at the webpage for Florida Adventure Trail we can head over to our next good resource which is going to be the YouTube icon that is going to take us over to the Sunshine State adventureco YouTube page and keep in mind this does have more than just the Florida Adventure Trail on it but if you head to the playlist sections you can find the friends on the fat and what John Burke Meyer with sunshine state adventureco has done is all of those people sharing videos on the Facebook group and just sharing their experiences along the Florida Adventure Trail he has compiled them here in this playlist on his YouTube channel there are 54 videos currently you can find our videos here our eight part series that we put together our friends from the Overlander ruse and our friends at baptism Overland have created video series here just a ton of other channels that have been putting together videos a lot of these videos have tons of good information local information about places to check out stop and explore and their experiences on the route just a great resource to check out so those are three great resources for researching whether or not you want to come out and tackle the 1200 mile Florida Adventure Trail definitely utilize those resources and Getting The F.A.T. say now you're at the point you've done your research you're all in you want to come out and create your own experiences along the trail while the next step and the next topic that we're going to talk about is going to the Florida Adventure Trail web store and purchasing our Florida Adventure Trail GPX file folder so let's head back to the website and get our route files starting back at the home page of floridaadventuretrail.com we can come over to the top right and select the shop tab where we can then click into the Florida Adventure Trail here like I mentioned earlier this is for purchasing the Florida Adventure Trail GPX folder for twenty dollars when we do this we're going to need to enter in an email it's important to use a useful email because this line here States as the route gets updated an updated file will be sent to the email that is connected to your order you're going to want to be able to keep an eye out for those updates the next thing you're going to want to check out is this disclaimer this basically states that you are responsible reliable for any damage any loss or any other such issues you may encounter this file is just a plotted route through these areas that will guide you along what is being called the Florida Adventure Trail everything else associated with running it your safety the safety of your equipment all of that is on you and you understand that risk so we're going to go ahead and we're are going to purchase this file now we're going to add it to carts the cart will pop up to the side we're going to go view the carts we can see the file here for twenty dollars there is a promo code line here and we welcome you to use Vikings 20. that's going to save you 20 percent on the routes and it'll knock four dollars off making the total now sixteen dollars we set this code up so that we do not get anything out of this this is solely for you our viewers and if you want to help support us the only thing we ask is that you like this video and consider subscribing so we're gonna now continue on with purchasing this we're going to use Apple pay to make this simple for us now that we've made the purchase it is asking us to choose a state we're going to select Florida and place the order now that we have successfully purchased the route we can see our web page receipt here it says that we will receive a confirmation email soon and we have now an order number here on this website receipts there is a download icon we don't have to wait for our email we can go ahead and now download the route straight from the website here and that will now go into our web page downloads folder awesome we've now What You Get With The F.A.T. successfully downloaded the Florida Adventure Trail GPX folder and we've been able to download it from the website itself let's go ahead and check out what it is that we received from our purchase looking now at our desktop this is the folder that was downloaded from the Florida Adventure Trail web store but before I show you that I wanted to show you this emailed receipt it's important to note that it says links are valid for 30 days but for those 30 days we can always come back to this email and re-download the files if we need to to so it's going to be a good idea to just go ahead and get the downloads taken care of before you lose that opportunity now coming back to the desktop we can click into our Florida Adventure Trail folder and once that's open we can see that there are four files contained you have the Florida Adventure Trail GPX file and the Florida Adventure Trail KML file those two files are the Florida Adventure Trail in the most common formats wanted by whatever GPS software or GPS device that you're going to import the trail into the next thing you have is a Florida State Parks Camping and cabins guide this is just a nice simple brochure about the Florida state parks and places to explore along the way and then the last thing here is a very important document it is the readme first first of the Florida Adventure Trail now we're not going to open up the readme to cover its information just know that that's a six page document and a lot of hard work went into it to provide a detailed basic layout of everything that you need to know in order to run the Florida Adventure Trail and yes the information contained within that document and what's going to be provided in this video is going to have some overlap the intention of this video is to not cover the readme's information it's to go alongside it to provide you our insight as Florida locals who have run the Florida Adventure trail with what we have learned should very much be considered while you're planning your trip on the Florida Adventure Trail so now that we're here we've purchased our document and we have downloaded our files we now need to get that Florida Importing The F.A.T. Into Gaia GPS Adventure Trail file into whatever map app or GPS device that we're wanting to use to navigate our way on the route now the Florida Adventure Trail was created in Gaia GPS on the website they recommend to use Gaia GPS and we have always personally use Gaia GPS for all of our adventures so what we're going to do now is we're going to show you how to get your Florida Adventure Trail GPX files into a free Gaia GPS account so that you can take a look at the route now in a very easy way so let's take a look at that now looking now at the home page of Gaia GPS we can see right away that we can sign up it's free or we can log in with an existing account like I said we're going to show you how to sign up for a free account and import the route into that so we made a mock account for this and then we're just going to use just a basic strong password and here we are just like that we now have a free account with Guy GPS we can now click and drag move around the map zoom in and out and check out various things on what is now essentially just a blank basic layered map the difference between a paid version and a free version is going to be this layers tab it's going to be how many maps are available to you and how many you can select at a time to Overlay together and basically make whatever kind of custom map it is that you're looking to have for whatever activity is you're wanting to do uh guys just kind of been nicely categorizing certain things so like it's pretty convenient having this over Landing tab it's got a couple of uh Maps here that are going to be ideal for over Landing so now that we have our map and we have our routes and the next thing we need to do is get our route into the map here so we're going to look for import or data over here on the left hand side and the tabs we're going to select that and click select files now we have that folder on our desktop so here it is the Florida Adventure Trail we can click into that and now you can see we can only select the KML file or the GPX file like I said these are the two most common formats of GPS routes like this GPX file is probably the most common so that's the one that we're going to use we're going to go ahead and click that now and it's going to pull up a prompt here saying that it's a large file import and then it contains 381 items we're going to want to select both waypoints and tracks there's 255 waypoints and there's 126 track items so now that we have those both selected we can click Imports and it'll start pulling that information in and start populating our map and we're now looking at the Florida Adventure Trail here we can see all of the items that are being imported right here to the left and if you wanted to unselect any of these you could at this point but most likely you're going to want every single one of these you can now save all 381 items and it's going to start saving the imported items and now that it's all saved we can see the Florida Adventure Trail and its entirety here and we can see all of those waypoints populating our map where that file now exists is going to be in the saved items and you can see it's going to all be collected into a folder called the Florida Adventure Trail and that's the basics of how to get your Florida Adventure Trail file imported into Gaia GPS again we used a free account to demonstrate this and you can certainly use this free account to plan out your trip along the Florida Adventure Trail however we do still recommend getting a paid version at some point before you set off on the trail the differences were again the amount of map layers that are going to be available to you and the offline usage that's going to be important because you're going to find that their cell coverage along most of the route but there are certainly areas where you're going to have limited cell coverage and that's where that offline usage is going to be important now there are tons of things that we can talk about with guided GPS but that's a whole different video we're gonna have to leave that research to you on your own time we're talking more specifics about the Florida Adventure Trail and how Guy GPS fits into play with that so we're going to cover up couple of other topics within the topic of map preparation the first What Do All The Colors Mean? one is going to be a very common question that we see in the Florida Adventure Trail Facebook group and that is what do all of the colors mean so let's head back to the map and I'll show you what the colors are and what they mean and the very simple answer to that question is that the colors don't mean anything as a function of Gaia GPS when you go to sit down on a computer and you click route to click out a route along the map or in the wild you go to record a track of where you've been Gaia GPS will select a different color for that track at random I can demonstrate this for you here real quick if I click route I can click align from here to here and you will see that that line will be saved as a blue line if I do it again and I continue that line along 94 here and I click from there to here and I save that you will now see that I have two separate lines recorded as two separate sections one blue and one orange so very simply the colors don't mean anything it's just how the map was built and honestly this is better that it was built like this if it was created all at once as one giant routed out track what you would have is a solid colored Florida Adventure trail that if you went to click it it would simply tell you that it's about 1200 miles long where if I click each of these different sections you can see that this one here in red is 17.6 miles this one here is 4.63 Miles and where that's going to be beneficial for you is if you're planning to run from here to here and you want to see how far of a distance that is well you would just simply Click on each of the small little sections and add up the amount of miles that section is to give you a total from point A to point B and that's very useful when trying to plan things out while you're out running the Florida Adventure Trail and that's the very simple explanation as to why the Florida Adventure Trail was created with a bunch of little sections that are all different colors the other thing you Keeping Your F.A.T. Updated might notice if you're clicking around on those sections is that each one has its own individual title you may find one section that say called fat line seven you may find another section that's called connector 19. all of those individual titles for those sections is another convenience that's going to roll us into the next topic of keeping our Florida Adventure Trail file up to date now when we purchase the route just a little while ago we should have received the most current route file available we also used an email that we can keep an eye on for updates as they're made Now updates to the route are made when there are trail closures that are reported say there's a better way to do a certain section or just adding waypoints but every so often an update comes out to the floor Adventure Trail and we're going to need to update our route that is now imported into our Gaia GPS account this is going to be important also because we have bought this route now we may do months of planning and when we actually go to set out on the Florida Adventure Trail we're going to want to have the most updated route because we may run into one of those trail closures that that update took care of so say you missed your email that information the updated route files is also put in another place that we can go and access at any time and check on before we run the Florida Adventure Trail so let me show you how to check to see if you have the most current updated file and how the updating process even looks like for this we're going to want to head back to floridaadventuretrail.com where we can then navigate up into the top right corner to the Facebook link to take us to the Florida Adventure Trail Facebook group in the Facebook group here we'll see some tabs up at the top discussion featured reels members media and files if we click on the files tab we will see some fat update files here we can click into one of these and it'll take us to the post that was created for updating the routes and we can now click the PDF here to download it where we can then take a look at the PDF this is what an update PDF will look like for the Florida Adventure Trail now we can see that there are two here we have here updates as of 11 12 22. if you downloaded your file after 11 12 2022 you don't need any of these These are going to be for update one two three and four here and then just above it you can see the second updates stacked on top of it where it says if you download your file after 11 22 2022 you don't need any of these and that's going to be for these updates here number number four and five and the way this is going to work is that each of these updates is going to provide instructions like let's take update number five here it says there is a closed gate in Tate's hell that was that has created an issue for connecting into Apalachicola National Forest you will need to delete the red section pictured below labeled fat Line Road then add GPX file Tates to ANF from the folder so the folder that they're talking about is listed here in the update it is this Dropbox link here where we can open that and we can take a look at those GPX files so we can see that that one that it was referencing was Tates to ANF we would download that and import that back into GP into Guy GPS after we had found the route and deleted the one that had asked us to and to do that we would go into the saved items here click into the Florida Adventure Trail and select the items tab here where we can individually see every single section of the route it is a little easier if you say filter them by routes take the waypoints out of there you can see all of the individualized sections and their names so you would find the one that it's listing you would click it and you would delete it and then you would import the individual route section from this Dropbox file here that it's asking you to then import into Gaia GPS it is a little complicated but honestly this is a very good method of doing this because then everybody can update their routes as they have it you wouldn't want to have this be updated as delete all of your Florida Adventure Trail file and replace it with the updated one because you may make changes and have things in that folder and this is honestly just one of the best ways to do this and it's good that it's a living breathing thing like this so that those adjustments can Part 1 - Closing Statements be made and that is going to wrap it up for the map preparation Topic in this video we have now discussed researching the Florida Adventure Trail getting our Florida Adventure Trail files importing those files into a GPS software like Gaia GPS and how to prepare our Maps so that we we can begin planning a trip along the Florida Adventure Trail and that's going to provide a nice stopping point for this video in the series because the next topics that we're wanting to discuss are actually related to planning the trip along the Florida Adventure Trail if you have topic suggestions or questions that you want us to incorporate in those videos feel free to leave us a comment with those ideas or questions and we will do our best to incorporate those into the videos so that way we can cover that information for you and if those videos have already been made still leave those topic suggestions or questions down in the comments we will do our best to provide you the information you're looking for and if you found the information in this video valuable please give the video a like consider subscribing and as always thank you for watching do more of what you love and we hope to see you on the next one foreign to learn more about us and find out ways to help support the adventures visit our website sunshinestatebikings.com and to keep up with our adventures be sure to subscribe and hit the notification button and follow us on Facebook and Instagram at sunshine state Vikings thank you [Music]