GPS's are fun, but they can get you in trouble

Decided to take my 7 year old out all day riding around in the Spitfire. A car that clearly hasn't been driven enough recently, judging by the mice living in it. Gotta work on this kid of mine, he had an absolute hissy fit when a mouse shot out of the dashboard and under his seat.

Decided to take the illustrius Delorme PN-20 GPS to keep notes on and see just where we are occassionally. An electronic map, notebook, and compass essentially.

As always, I found interesting things. LIke this yard crammed with full sized cement animals. Life sized giraffes, zebras, and cartoon characters. Made a note of that one! And the gokart track my son spotted. As well a few other things. Dandy notebook. Push the note pin button, type in a description if you wish, and there's a note pinned to the map about what you found there that caught your interest. Sweet!

BUT then he wanted to go up into the mountains. OK. Fine by me. Well those mountain roads in PA are generally unmapped, and if they are, they don't match a map if you've got one. But with this GPS, it's got excellent maps, including all sorts of hiking trails and roads that a Spitfire has absolutely no business being on. More than once we found ourselves gingerly picked our way across some streams and through boulder fields that are optimistically called roads. One road ended partway up with all sorts of militaristic barriers and warnings of death and dismemberment by the US government should you even attempt to proceed. And no, I wasn't anywhere near Camp David, I was about 15 miles NW of Chambersburg. Only one road had me really worried, and that was a badly crowned road that leaned over a high cliff for quite a ways, climbing fairly steeply. Didn't help that it was loosely heaped gravel. Several times we suddenly slipped towards the edge, and I was already forced to ride it because of the crowning.

A good GPS with great mapping software is absolutely the greatest things I've found for finding my way around those seriously confusing back woods roads in PA. That was fun!

about 2 weeks ago i used my TomTom to find "alternate" routes up to college. Apperantly "Non-paved Roads" includes seasonal highway. I haven't looked to see if this inculdes state land trails. Im on my second or third seasonal road, in an R/T Neon, no less, and it gets pretty bad. Worse than I have seen on some trails. Granted, I have gone farther off-road than 99% luxo SUV's in neons, but I went a little too far. And got the radiator suport hung up.

then I hiked out 5 miles till I was picked up by my dad. Luckily, the spot where It was stuck had 3 bars on my cell.

And lucky that when I get back to try and get it out, a good sumaritan pulled it back about 10 feet.

foxtrapper wrote: Decided to take the illustrius Delorme PN-20 GPS to keep notes on and see just where we are occassionally. An electronic map, notebook, and compass essentially. [snip] Dandy notebook. Push the note pin button, type in a description if you wish, and there's a note pinned to the map about what you found there that caught your interest. Sweet!

And that is why portable GPS will continue to kick the backside of every built-in navi in a car. The navi in my BMW can barely get me point A to B and thinks my house is about a quarter mile from where it really is, though that's more a function of the fact that only 2 companies really do the mapping and they haven't updated my location in quite a while. I've never seen a built-in navi with that kind of functionality.

Scott

Delorme PN-20, you say...

What can it do (too lazy to search, and you'd probably enjoy talking about it)?

foxtrapper wrote: Decided to take my 7 year old out all day riding around in the Spitfire. A car that clearly hasn't been driven enough recently, judging by the mice living in it. Gotta work on this kid of mine, he had an absolute hissy fit when a mouse shot out of the dashboard and under his seat

Awesome . Grassroots Father-son Bonding. Events like that are never forgotten.

m

We took "Tomtom" with us on our honeymoon trip to Gatlinburg TN. The drive was an absolute adventure, with similiar experiences. (driving from Toronto, ON) We saw places in Virginia, TN, WV, PA etc that most tourists never catch a glimpse of! I couldn't believe the "roads" mapped on it, and it got us 'unlost' a bunch of times! (like the time the Blue Ridge was closed, so we took the first forest "road" left :) )

I went out to Yosemite two years ago with my father and my uncle. My uncle drove out there but was pretty stressed about driving in the mountains. I offered to drive back, since I had fallen asleep for part of the ride out.

Our rented Durango had a Garmin GPS in it. I entered the name "Moccassin", a town that we had passed though about two hours before getting to Yosemite. The Garmin told me that we would be there in something like 25 minutes. I though I had made a mistake, so I entered it again, with the same results.

I followed the directions on the GPS, which took me down Old Priest Grade, which went down the opposite side of the valley that we had come up.

I felt like I was starring in news footage from one of those Brazilian bus crashes. The speed limit was 15 mph in places and I doubt that I was doing half of that. There were dropoffs of several hundred feet, with no guardrails.

It was terrifying, but I can't wait to do it again!

Not my video, but you'll get the idea: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94EKYyavD90

hey neighbor! :) I'm in lancaster county.

old preist, go up that for a hill climb

neon4891 wrote: old preist, go up that for a hill climb

Major penalty for going off course.

foxtrapper wrote: One road ended partway up with all sorts of militaristic barriers and warnings of death and dismemberment by the US government should you even attempt to proceed. And no, I wasn't anywhere near Camp David, I was about 15 miles NW of Chambersburg.

= Letterkenny Ordinance Depot Area.

My garmin kept telling me to get off the highway towing to Pocono. I knew better and kept on going my way (guy thing). On the way home, I listened to the box and cut 27 miles and a half hour out of the ride. At $4 per gallon and a 9 mpg average, it was a $12 refund. Do it 53 more times, and the GPS is paid for!

Cool stories

car39, it sounds like your unit was set on "shortest route" rather than "fastest route", although these things have been wrong for me in the past. I think they're a lot better now

I just don't keep mine in the car any more

Woodyhfd wrote: Not my video, but you'll get the idea: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94EKYyavD90

Pfft big deal. Not only can you clearly see the abyss, there's a full two lanes of paved road, and in great condition at that!

You need to do some driving in South America or the Caribbean.

foxtrapper wrote: Well those mountain roads in PA are generally unmapped, and if they are, they don't match a map if you've got one. But with this GPS, it's got excellent maps, including all sorts of hiking trails and roads that a Spitfire has absolutely no business being on.

Oh... did we find this out the hard way yesterday returning home from Watkins Glen... My g/f had decided she didn't want to take any highways from her house in Plainsboro NJ to WG for the Vintage Festival. For the drive up, she mapped out a fairly straight, but awkward route up NJ, over and up through PA and into NY... getting somewhat messed up in trying to get over to Horseheads (where the motel was) from where we entered from PA on Rt 858. But all things considered, not bad... and some fun, twisty roads.

She's in her Spitfire, I followed behind in our '07 Mini 'vert.

The return trip started out ok, but then the GPS got seriously confused... and we ended up on a couple of roads that went from fun to tight to dirt and sometimes a driveway (doh!). And then we finally got back on track and things were good again... until we got to Scranton and Wilkes Barre... and things got messed up again... By this point, my g/f's limited patience had been worn to nothing and in a fit of frustration she found I-81 and that was that... 70+ mph the rest of the way home...

Mental note: the next time my g/f routes out some wacky driving route, I need to map it out on Streets and print out hard copies with additional prints of the surrounding areas in case of... confusion...

I always thought a GPS would be a distraction, but I found that to be the exact opposite of the truth. Once you're no longer stressed about being lost, you can actually pay attention to your driving instead of clutching the wheel and wildly flailing about looking for street signs, mile markers, please god anything, WHERE THE HELL AM I?!

Oh, sorry about that.

nasaregistrar wrote:

foxtrapper wrote: One road ended partway up with all sorts of militaristic barriers and warnings of death and dismemberment by the US government should you even attempt to proceed. And no, I wasn't anywhere near Camp David, I was about 15 miles NW of Chambersburg.

= Letterkenny Ordinance Depot Area.

Yep, and there is more than one road like that in the area. The wife and I were out for a ride about 10 years ago and I was trying to find a shortcut back south to MD. I hit 3 of them before I found one that went around the edge of it.

Last month I was trying to show a friend who just moved to the area where "Site R" is and managed to run up another one of those roads.

neon4891 wrote: about 2 weeks ago i used my TomTom to find "alternate" routes up to college. Apperantly "Non-paved Roads" includes seasonal highway. I haven't looked to see if this inculdes state land trails. Im on my second or third seasonal road, in an R/T Neon, no less, and it gets pretty bad. Worse than I have seen on some trails. Granted, I have gone farther off-road than 99% luxo SUV's in neons, but I went a little too far. And got the radiator suport hung up. then I hiked out 5 miles till I was picked up by my dad. Luckily, the spot where It was stuck had 3 bars on my cell. And lucky that when I get back to try and get it out, a good sumaritan pulled it back about 10 feet.

Neon, where is college? I know you live in my area, and i know most of the seasonal roads in Tompkins county (combination mountain biking as well as occasional off road hooliganry), maybe you ended up somewhere i know well.

I actually really dislike GPS's. One of my favorite things to do on a day off of school was go get lost on purpose. By the end of senior year, I don't think that there was a road in my county I hadn't been on.

My Garmin etrex doesn't even pretend to have maps ...

What was it David Crockett said? "I have never been lost. I have been a might confused for three or four days at at time ..."

slantvaliant wrote: My Garmin etrex doesn't even pretend to have maps ... What was it David Crockett said? "I have never been lost. I have been a might confused for three or four days at at time ..."

I believe his words were "My father can lick any man in Kentucky, and I can lick my father"

I kinda watched the movie about 400 times from the ages of 3-6. (No, thats not an exaggeration), and everytime it is mentioned I think of that line.

I... must... not... reply...

Osterkraut wrote: Delorme PN-20, you say... What can it do (too lazy to search, and you'd probably enjoy talking about it)?

A picture is worth a thousand words in this case.

DeLorme PN-20 vs Garmin

and if that link didn't work right, here it is manually. http://forum.delorme.com/viewtopic.php?t=9187&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=&sid=f33d0aef21c85debb24448a5c42d6934

Look at the pictures of the display on the screens. That more than anything else is what sold me on the PN-20. The Garmin is a better unit, but the DeLorme PN-20 has such vastly superior mapping that it makes up for it, more than makes up for it. Especially at a mere $170-180 on ebay.