 This week's Friday Feature follows GPS City customer Tom on his coast to coast drive. Tom left the East Coast and headed west. Once he arrived in California, he turned around and headed back east. Tom explains, "I purchased my Garmin, RAM Mount and the hockey puck dash mount from GPS City (just as the unit came to market) for a coast to coast vacation I was planning. I had always wanted to drive cross country, and I finally got the chance. I preloaded all the detailed street level maps I would need on 2 memory cards. I also printed out a full set of turn-by-turn directions in case something bad happened to the GPS unit along the way. Luckily, everything went off without a hitch! For 17 days, I followed the voice navigation instructions. In over 7,000 miles of driving, I only encountered 2 minor navigation glitches - both of which were corrected in subsequent firmware updates from Garmin." "My route took me to the Gateway Arch, Kansas Cosmosphere, Pikes Peak, the Royal Gorge Railroad, the Meteor Crater, the Grand Canyon, Valley of Fire, the Queen Mary, the Santa Monica Pier, and up the Pacific Coast Highway to San Francisco before turning East onto I-80 and heading home. A few weeks after returning home, I also visited Cape Cod, finishing a full coast-to-coast tour. [I] had no problem finding places for me (and my car) to refuel, or redirecting me back onto my route during those times when I decided to stray off the beaten path. And the trip computer was always extremely accurate as to arrival times, etc." "Being a ham radio guy, I also had [my GPS] tied into my ham radio in the car. Using something called APRS, the Garmin was transmitting my position, speed, elevation, and heading every 5 minutes. These transmissions were automatically received and relayed by other ham stations and linked to the internet - giving all my friends back home (or anywhere in the world for that matter with internet access) live position reports showing where I was on detailed maps! WAY COOL! The map pictured here is a composite of all the position reports received via the internet displayed on a Landsat map of the USA. The gaps in the track are due to areas of poor radio coverage." He concludes, "All in all, the trip was fantastic and would have been much less enjoyable without the GPS navigation. I can't even imagine trying to navigate the L.A. freeways while trying to read maps and printed directions!" For more details on his cross country drive, read Tom's original post. We want to hear your story! Submit your story and pictures to the GPS City Gallery. If you include photos with your story, we'll send you a FREE T-shirt upon approved submission. GPS City T-shirts are navy blue with white letters. International addresses subject to a mailing fee. |
