Straypath
Florida's scenic byways and hidden stops, in one map. Discover 32 officially designated scenic corridors, find parks and trailheads along any route, build an itinerary, and hand it off to navigation. No account required. No data stored in the cloud.
Why It Exists
Florida has 32 officially designated scenic byways. Most people have never heard of them, and the ones who have found them through a state agency PDF last updated in 2019. Planning a multi-stop day trip still means bouncing between a mapping app, a notes app, and a pile of open browser tabs.
Three separate apps got built trying to solve pieces of this problem: a byway map, a park finder, and an itinerary builder. Straypath is what happens when all three share the same screen.
Before
Florida's Scenic Byways
The corridor map, nothing more
Before
ParkFindr
Park discovery near your location
Before
RouteHub
Drag-and-drop itinerary builder
| If you are... | Straypath helps you... |
|---|---|
| Planning a Florida road trip | See every scenic corridor at once, find stops along the route, and hand it off to navigation |
| A Florida resident | Discover designated scenic roads you've driven past without knowing what they were |
| A nature photographer | Locate trailheads near a specific byway for early morning light |
| A weekend day-tripper | Build a 4-stop Saturday loop, sort it by proximity, and share it before you leave |
| Traveling with a dog | Find open, accessible green spaces near where you're staying |
Features
Byway Map
All 32 Florida scenic byways rendered as color-coded polylines from a curated GeoJSON dataset. The discovery radius adjusts as you zoom. Tap any segment for details.
POI Discovery
Parks, trailheads, campgrounds, and natural areas load as markers via Google Places. Search for any location and nearby POIs load around it automatically.
Itinerary Builder
Add up to 10 stops from anything on the map. Drag to reorder, sort by proximity with one tap, and add a short field note to any stop. No account needed.
Share Without a Server
Trip data is compressed directly into the URL using lz-string. Anyone with the link opens your stops on a read-only map view. No login, no expiration, no backend.
Navigation Handoff
Tap Google Maps or Apple Maps to send all your stops as waypoints and start navigation immediately. Apple Maps handoff is available on iOS and macOS.
Installable PWA
Install to your home screen on iOS, Android, or desktop. The app shell and byway data work offline. POI search requires a connection (live API call).
How to Use It
Open it in a browser, allow location access (or search for a location manually), and start exploring. No install required, though the PWA install is worth it for field use.
- 1 Open straypath.app in a mobile or desktop browser
- 2 Allow location access when prompted, or search for a starting location manually
- 3 Toggle Byways to show Florida's scenic corridors on the map
- 4 Tap any marker or byway to see details, then tap Add to itinerary
- 5 Open the itinerary drawer (checklist icon, bottom right), tap Sort nearby to optimize stop order
- 6 Tap Google or Apple to start navigation with all stops loaded as waypoints
Privacy
Straypath has no user accounts, no database, and no server-side storage tied to you. Your itinerary is never sent to a server. The share URL encodes your stops as compressed data directly in the URL string. Location is used only to center the map and search nearby places; it is never logged or transmitted beyond the proxied Places API call.
| Key | What it stores | Expires |
|---|---|---|
straypath:ip-location |
Approximate location from IP geolocation | 24 hours |
straypath:poi-cache |
Nearby POI results to reduce API calls | 24 hours |
straypath:welcomed |
Whether you've seen the welcome screen | Never (one-time flag) |
straypath:drawer-state |
Whether the itinerary drawer was open | Session |
Tech Stack
| Layer | Technology |
|---|---|
| Framework | Vue 3 (Composition API) |
| Build tool | Vite |
| Styling | Tailwind CSS |
| Maps | Leaflet.js with CartoDB Voyager tiles |
| Places data | Google Places API (New), server-side proxied |
| Route sharing | lz-string (URL compression, no server) |
| Byway data | GeoJSON sourced from FDOT / FHWA |
| Offline support | PWA with Service Worker |
| Hosting | Vercel |
Go somewhere worth going
Straypath is free, requires no account, and works on any device. Open it before your next Florida trip or install it to your home screen and keep it there.