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@Lostby7 wrote:

Where’s the I hate Peeps option?

Completely agree!

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I’ve seen lots of post on the geocaching.com forum where people are using auto units to find geocaches. Most of these people already had the auto unit and didn’t want to buy another unit right away. The most common thing I’ve read is they aren’t very accurate in the woods, and jump around allot making it very difficult to pinpoint a cache.

I use a 60Cx as my caching/auto gps and it works great, but if I was buying again I wouldn’t buy it.
I would buy a a Nuvi 255W for the car for $175 and a VentureHC for the trail for only $130. Total would be less than I originally paid for the 60Cx($375+$100 maps), and I would get my street maps for free with the Nuvi. Then I would just download one of the many free trail maps on gps file depot website for the ventureHC.

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@Ratz and company wrote:

DEPARTMENT DISK, STAMPED 8580 A1 1967, SET IN THE SOUTHEAST CORNER WALK OF BRIDGE (NO. 9320). MAIN BRIDGE OVER MISSISSIPPI RIVER.

Even not knowing how to read the full description, the text above I pulled from that above should be able to get you right where you need to be even with crappy coordinates.

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@Trekkin’ and Birdin’ wrote:

We were coming home from the Baraboo Dells area last Saturday, and though we know the way, we wanted to see what “Mom” (the nuvi) would tell us is our shortest route. She put us on the Sparta Elroy Trail! And the directions knew it was a bike trail, not a road! LOL

These errors do correctly name the trail, but the map shows them as roads so the gps thinks it can follow them. I located this error and submitted it, hopefully it won’t take 3+ map updates this time for the errors to be fixed.

If anyone else has seen any errors like these you should submit them yourself(the link I posted above) or post some coordinates here & I’ll submit them. I like having my maps as accurate as possible.

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You really can’t blame the GPS, since it wasn’t driving…. with that said I’m not surprised this happened. I have the newest Garmin street maps & noticed more than one state trail that is shown as a road.

City Navigator NT 2009.1(Newest)
over by Dodgeville part of the Military Ridge State trail is shown as a road, here: N42 59.639 W90 06.156
Near Monroe part of the Cheese Counrty Trail is Shown as a road, here: N42 35.607 W89 40.573

Navteq is who Garmin uses for data I guess someone should use their Map error reporter so these types of this happen less. I’ve reported errors in the past, but it took about three map update for the changes to show up. I submitted the two errors I mentioned above after reading this forum post.
http://mapreporter.navteq.com/dur-web-external/secured/submitDur.do?userType=CONSUMER&language=en

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@cheezehead wrote:

Did anyone else notice that it also shows Benchmarks?

I had not noticed the benchmarks so decided to take a look. Around here it doesn’t show any old ones, only the newer GPS benchmarks. These are great sites for checking your GPS accuracy.

Some of the ones around here I had already added as waymarks.

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@SammyClaws wrote:

However, you can pass the chip between units without any problem. Since my wife and I both have a GPS, we just take the chip out and put it in the other GPS. Also when we bought new GPSs’ we just moved the chip.

This is the single reason for buying the maps on the card over the CD. If you ever buy a new Garmin GPS, you can use the same maps without shelling out another $100+ dollars for maps.

@SammyClaws wrote:

Personally, I didnt see the need to update the maps as the road ways don’t seem to change all that much. And by skipping 3 updates, I could afford another CN on a micro SD card.

I always check out the newest maps Garmin has, there is no reason to upgrade every year unless you travel allot. Skipping every couple years is a great way to get more for your money, since more has actually changed.

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@Sparse Grey Hackle wrote:

This sounds interesting. A couple of questions.

This topo download can be used for MapSource and you can you then load the top into the Garmin 60Cx?

SGH

Yes, you need to have Mapsource installed, this installs another map option in the drop down(upper left) in mapsource. You can them load them along with any other maps to your mapping GPS.

@Sparse Grey Hackle wrote:

If so, can you then utilize the auto-routing feature for the Garmin 60Cx ?

Do you then have 2 map formats in the GarminCx to opt to use?

Thanks in advance. I like topos.

SGH

If you have City Navigator or any other garmin autorouting gps maps, you can load these topo maps and city navigator at the same time to your GPS. You can them autoroute, but not when you have the topo maps displayed. You would need to hide the city navigator maps in one of the menus to see your topo maps.

If someone would make a transparent topo map like the one Illinois has from that website you can autoroute with topo maps. You need to have City navigator also & then just load both maps at once to your GPS.
The Illinois map overlaps Wisconsin a bit in the Northern IL, so I use it when I’m around home too.

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@kbraband wrote:

Will these topo maps work on a Garmin 60CSx?

I’m using them on my 60Cx without a problem.

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Anyone try a Permethrin based repellent? from what I heard if a tick crawls on your treated clothes it dies within a few seconds. your clothes with remain treated for up to 6 washes or weeks.

They make smaller bottles, but even the big one at REI seems responsibly priced defense against these things.
http://www.rei.com/product/768970

This is a pesticide so it will kill any bugs it comes in contact with, and it can also be harmful to some small animals. From what I’ve read though it’s actually safer than deet for humans, since you are applying to your clothes not your skin. http://www.epa.gov/oppsrrd1/REDs/factsheets/permethrin_fs.htm

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Had one tick on me after hiking in governor Dodge State Park this weekend.

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Looking at other nearby states, looks like they also now have Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa, & Illinois topo maps.
I have used the Illinois Transparent 24K Topo in the past, it only has water data and contour lines. Because it’s transparent I could display my City Navigator 2009NT road data and the topo contours at the same time. Pretty nice having good street data with a topo map and being able to autoroute with a topo map.

http://www.gpsfiledepot.com/maps/

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I have been following the Pn-40 since it first came out. For the money I don’t think there is a better unit to be had(this coming from a Garmin owner). The unit comes with topo 7, has a 3 axis compass, Altimeter, paperless caching, 1gb internal memory(SD expandable to 32gb), & a beautiful screen(though small).

The unit uses the same gps chipset as the new Garmin oregon, though it think it uses a bigger antenna. I’ve heard battery life is a bit low, but if you buy the optional lithium battery kit its much better. Delorme even released an addon so you can use the send to GPS button on every cache page now just like garmins can. One negative is the topo 7 software has a step learning curve, because it’s so feature rich compared to anything you have used.

I’ve owned Magellan, Lowrance, & Garmin GPS units, & if I was in the market right now I would definitely look at the PN-40 very seriously.

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Using garmins POI loader you can store custom POI files on your memory card. these are not waypoints, but are essentially the same thing.

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I only had a Lowrance H20 to play with for a few days, but I did get it working with GSAK. I send the waypoints to my SD card via a card reader, but when i put the card into the unit I still didn’t get any waypoints.

I found out after playing around a bit you need to tell the unit to load the waypoint file(some buried menu), the reason being is you can have dozens of waypoint files on the card for different areas.

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