How to Find Scenic Motorcycle Roads (And the Apps That Help)

If you ride, you know the feeling. You turn down a road you’ve never been on, the scenery opens up, horses on the right, woods on the left, and you think – why don’t I ride roads like this every single time? That’s exactly the kind of moment that keeps me on two wheels. Out here in southeast Pennsylvania, these little backcountry roads are everywhere if you know how to find them.

The hard part isn’t discovering them. The hard part is finding them again.

The Problem With Stumbling Onto Great Roads

Most riders have been there. You wander down a random road, take a few turns, get a little lost, and end up somewhere beautiful. It’s one of the best things about riding. But unless you’re paying close attention to road names and landmarks, that road is gone. You’ll spend the next three rides trying to recreate it and wonder if you imagined the whole thing.

I do this constantly. I’ll have an amazing ride, get home, and realize I have no idea where half of it was. No notes, no saved routes, nothing. Just a memory and some bugs on my visor.

That’s where motorcycle navigation apps come in – and if you’re a newer rider or someone who’s been riding mostly on mapped-out routes, these apps can genuinely change the way you explore.

The Best Motorcycle Apps for Finding Scenic Roads

There are a handful of solid options out there, and they all do roughly the same thing: help you find low-traffic, twisty, scenic roads instead of just routing you down the fastest highway. Here’s my honest take on the ones I’ve actually used.

Calimoto

This is the one I keep coming back to, even though it is the most expensive of the bunch. Right now it runs about $80 a year, while most of the competing apps land around $40. That price gap is real and it is a little painful, especially when you forget to cancel and wake up to a renewal charge.

But here’s the thing – Calimoto earns it. The twisty roads feature is the best I’ve used, by a wide margin. It has taken me down back roads I didn’t know existed even after years of riding the same general areas. That’s not something I can say about any other app.

The mapping system used to be a real weak spot. There was a stretch where finding an address was genuinely frustrating. You needed an exact address, exact township, everything perfect or the app just gave up. They eventually partnered with TomTom to overhaul the whole mapping side of things, and since then it has been much better. You can search for something like a Wawa on a specific route and it just finds it. That sounds like a low bar, but it was a big deal for usability.

My main complaint is that I forget to use it. I’ll subscribe, use it a ton for a few months, then drift away from it and get surprised by the renewal. Totally my fault – but it does mean you should be intentional about subscribing when you’re actually in an active riding season.

Detecht

I had a paid subscription of Detecht for about a year. It was useful and I liked it well enough, but I had one experience that really shook my confidence in the accident detection feature. I got rear ended – my bike got knocked over ($5k in damage) – and the app didn’t recognize it as an accident. That’s not a small thing. If a safety feature doesn’t work when you actually need it, it puts the whole app in a different light. Your mileage may vary, but it’s something to be aware of.

Rever

I used Rever for a stretch, it that came bundled with a Riders Plus Subscription. The Riders Plus program is a paid membership that offers discounts on gear and offers cash back on purchases. If you’re buying gear regularly from RevZilla or Cycle Gear, the discounts can make it worthwhile. If you’re like me and only replace gear every couple of years, the math doesn’t really work out.

Rever has a twisty roads feature but it didn’t do it for me the way Calimoto does. It’s a decent app, just not the one I reach for first.

So Which App Should You Actually Use?

If you’re just getting into motorcycle navigation apps and you want the best experience for finding scenic roads, Calimoto is worth the extra cost. The twisty roads routing alone is worth it, and the improved mapping makes it genuinely easy to use day to day. Just set a calendar reminder before the renewal date so you’re not caught off guard.

If the price is a sticking point, look at what Rever and Scenic offer at their price points and see if they cover what you need. They’re both legitimate apps, they just haven’t matched Calimoto’s routing for my style of riding.

And honestly? Sometimes the best road you’ll ever find is the one you turned down by accident, no app needed. The trick is just figuring out how to get back there.

Watch the Full Ride

Check out the video above to see what a southeast Pennsylvania backcountry road actually looks like, including the part where pavement turned to gravel and I had to make a judgment call. Worth it.

If you’ve found a motorcycle app you love or have a go-to method for saving scenic routes, drop it in the comments. Always looking for new ways to find roads like this. And if you haven’t subscribed to the channel yet, come ride along – new videos whenever the roads and weather cooperate.