Garmin 72 and 76 Auto Mount User Gallery
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| 7,400 MILES IN 17 DAYS! |
Track of trip was transmitted live to the net (gaps due to radio coverage) |
Finally |
home again! | | | |
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I purchased my Garmin GPSmap276C, along with a RAM mount and the hockey puck dash mount from GPS City in 2004 (just as the unit came to market) for a coast to coast vacation I was planning to take in June of 04. 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 276C's 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. All along the way, the 276C worked great! It 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 the 276C 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 transmisions were automatically recevied 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 where my signal didn't make it to the 'net.
My only negative comment is that the original software did not provide for elevation mapping (2-D tracks only) when downloading saved tracks. Later software updates corrected this, allowing for full 3-D tracklogs. It would have been neat to see the elevation profile as I crossed the Great Plains, went over the Continental Divide, ascended Pikes Peak, etc. But who knows? There were so many other places I wanted to visit and/or stay and explore longer, maybe the pieces for another epic trip will fall together someday...
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! The 276C took all the stress out of making the correct turns, and also gave me the freedom to wander around abit without fear of getting lost.
One last note: For those sharp-eyed readers, the photo of the trip computer screen, the total trip time is obviously not accurate. This is due to turning off the unit at night, during rest stops, while touring attractions, etc.
More photos and details available at the website link. |
POSTED BY: Tom Rowinski on June 11, 2009
CATEGORY: Travel
VIEWS: 4064 |
| PLACES: USA Coast to Coast |
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