One of the most common questions I receive is, “what do you use to navigate?” While appearing as a simple question, my usual spiel seems to have a near perfect 100% success rate of overwhelming. In this article I will answer the question as concisely as possible — though fair warning, I do like writing.

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While traveling on interstates, I’ve come to prefer Waze & Google Maps, depending on my mood. In a particularly law enforcement-friendly state such as Virginia, Waze is preferred as I have found that it often has superior police presence notifications. Google Maps is preferred in most other situations as it has superior data on restaurants, coffee shops, gas stations, and most importantly, Planet Fitness’. When traveling in denser cities, I prefer Apple Maps for it’s simplistic UI — I am already overwhelmed enough by tall building and hordes of people.

But for everything beyond four lane interstates and one way traffic jams, I rely on OnX Offroad.

From cattle land in Kansas to backcountry highways in Alaska to national parks in the northeast to the deserts of Utah, there exists no tool more vital in my search for off-grid adventure than OnX. With detailed topographic and satellite imaged maps, I can not only find roads — I can find routes, locations, vistas, mountains, meadows, and so on. If you can see it from space, it’s visible on OnX.

Not only is OnX crucial for my navigation, it’s invaluable during the summer which is when most of my travels take place. While here in South Carolina we almost exclusively have controlled burns, in states with more public land and less proactive land management, wildfires are often a hazard — and OnX lists those too.

Another problem that OnX solves is deciding not only what is a good place to camp, but even more importantly what is a legal place to camp. I have had one run in of camping on what I thought was public land but turned out to be private, and truthfully it’s an awkwardness (and potentially a danger) that I never wish to wander into again. Thankfully OnX lists literally every public land boundary in the country. From specific tribal lands, state forests, national parks, Off Highway Vehicle (OHV) areas, to military installations and BLM lands and so on.

I never have any question about whose lands I’m camping on: if it’s private, I know.

Another fantastic benefit to using OnX is its lists of pre-defined routes. Vetted routes are approved and listed on the app, whether it be the Georgia Traverse (which I did last year & is fantastic) to Hells Revenge in Moab, UT. If the trail has a name, it’s probably mapped, rated, reviewed, and photographed all in the OnX Offroad app.

As if all of the above wasn’t enough, OnX has waypoints… and they’re superior in every way to Google Maps’. In OnX, there are a multitude of categories: swimming holes, camp sites, rivers, water crossings, fuel, food storage, closed gates, caves, fire lookouts, non ethanol gas, washouts, waterfalls, left turns and right turns to name a few. There is quite literally nothing that can not be described with a simple waypoint — and if that isn’t enough, you can include photographs and notes. Nowadays, whenever I find something I like, my first choice is to put it in OnX; Google Maps comes second.

While most of what I’ve shown is broad, OnX also gets extremely specific. Above you can see the topography of this portion of Lousiana over the satellite imagery — we’re talking about literal tens of feet in elevation listed. On top of that you can see the color coding; generally, green is a full width vehicle trail, blue & green is an approved (well known) trail, and orange with lines is a dirt bike trail.

And if you’re ever in the area, that pin is a pretty darn good camping spot — thank me later.

Navigation appears complicated, but it truly isn’t. I use four different apps, three of which are defaults; Waze, Google Maps, and Apple Maps. Some folks use even more, and even fewer folks have dedicated GPS units like the Garmin Overlander. While such a unit is likely a good investment for more hard-core adventurers, I’ve found myself satisfied simply with my phone and an app like OnX Offroad.