Garmin GPS maps

[dude772]

Hey, i was wondering if anyone has Garmin GPS map updates for canada or states. I want to have maps with trails for offroading or some kind of breadcrumb trail add on thing, so if i go offroading i can find my way back the same way i went.

 

[LittleBigFoot]

When ever i take my (crap, i cant remember the name, my friends using it) wheeling with me, it just shows a blank white screen. Kinda erie if you ask me.

If your state allows motor vehicals on park roads / trails that are numbered, usually they show up on a gps anyway. On mine at least

 

[sweetsride]

here is a link to the garmin mapsourse add ons

http://www8.garmin.com/cartography/mapSource/topoCanada.jsp#

This would be the one i would buy if it was me


Kris

 

[dude772]

When ever i take my (crap, i cant remember the name, my friends using it) wheeling with me, it just shows a blank white screen. Kinda erie if you ask me.

If your state allows motor vehicals on park roads / trails that are numbered, usually they show up on a gps anyway. On mine at least

Im my province, specifically near my family friends place up north. in the summer your allowed to drive on numbered snowmobile trails, but i looked and those are nowhere to be found on my map, its missing a wack of rivers that join all the lakes, and missing most of the lakes too... i dont like that very much...

If i could find the blasted breadcrumb thing it wouldn't bother me at all

 

[compleckz]

as sweetsride said, what you need to get ahold of is some topo maps.. and here is why:

i have a set for the U.S. i downloaded, and they are VERY usefull. they have lots of 'trails' on them.. pretty much any trail that used to be a road at some point in the last 100 years is on the topos, and it has lead me on many a great adventure. most of these trails are still 'legal town roads', just unmaintained by the town. some roads i have been on around here, have been discontinued for 50+ years.. lots of the state forest roads are on the topos too, and almost none are on the 'city navigator' software. also the topos have powerlines/high tension lines on the map, which a lot of decent trails around here follow, so thats also helpful for offroading.

and it will get rid of eerie feeling of staring at a blank screen when in the woods, because it shows topo lines and almost all water sources, from streams to lakes to the ocean. it also shows POIs that the 'city navigator north america' maps wont.. it has lots more 'natural' resources listed.

depending on what garmin gps you have, you may have the 'traclog' feature like my gpsmap 60csx, i use that whenever i'm off a trail or road, *ESPECIALLY* on foot. its hard to get lost with a gps, but it sure it helpful making your own shortcuts on the hike back

so what do you have for a gps? let me know and maybe i can help out a little more, every since i got the gps for myself, i've been obsessed with it.

 

[AllanD]

I got a Magellan roadmate 1200 for myself two weeks ago. it's a city/highway mapping GPS and so far I like it ...

It directely to the stops I had to make on my way ot to wyoming (where I'm posting from) and even helped me navigate directly to a chinese buffet in Scottsbluff Nebraska
when it was time for dinner on the way here...

But for "offroad use"? I believe that other than accurate lat/lon positions it would be just about useless.

I think a handheld "hiking" type GPS with topo's loaded are the wway to fly.

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[MAKG]

Some of the high end Garmin Nuvis appear to have available topo maps. The Street Pilot c550 I just picked up appears to have little more than slightly modified Tiger Census data within the US. This does have quite a lot of otherwise unmarked roads on it, but if you want to depend on Tiger to keep you from getting lost, just make sure you have a satellite phone with you....

Let's put it this way. It says inaccessible roads are passible. It places all points of interest in northeast Ohio at least a few tenths of a mile off. The Garmin algorithm at least places you on the nearest road even if you aren't there (for instance, in a parking lot). This is for driving. It's not for remote areas. It seems to be optimized for single-leg interstate road trips. It's routing for complex routes is, let's just say, a little wacky. It assumes there are no red lights, and will happily route you down surface streets through nasty parts of town if it thinks it takes 30 seconds less than the interstate (which it does all too often because it knows about speed limits but not red lights).... And Garmin doesn't have a "try again" button like TomTom does.

My conclusion from researching all this is that handhelds and road navigators are, at least for the moment, distinct products. It costs FAR more to get them in one package than to buy them separately.

 

[dude772]

depending on what garmin gps you have, you may have the 'traclog' feature like my gpsmap 60csx, i use that whenever i'm off a trail or road, *ESPECIALLY* on foot. its hard to get lost with a gps, but it sure it helpful making your own shortcuts on the hike back

so what do you have for a gps? let me know and maybe i can help out a little more, every since i got the gps for myself, i've been obsessed with it.

Ive got the garmin nuvi 250, seems like a nice little unit. I looked at the topo maps, but they are 150 for canada and im uneasy spending that on somehthing ive never tried or demoed before. Im having trouble finding anything about traclog or breadcrumb trails or tracback or anything to do with loging your trip.

 

[compleckz]

yea i would assume the gps' like the nuvi dont have a traclog feature, as they are more for roads..

IM sent about the topos.

 

[05Blue]

Check around where you live. Sporting goods stores, etc. I just got a garmin rino gps/2-way radio combo for Christmas and there is a gun shop in my town that will load maps onto them for you. If you can find a place that maybe sells the gps units and is not a big chain store they might have maps available to load as well.

 

[gizmo_21]

if your having troubles with the maps, i just picked up a Garmin Legend HCx (haven't tried it yet) but was able to find the maps (canada topo's) as well as the mapsend software... i could try to zip it and send it over....

Ry

 

[AllanD]

POI searches on the magellan are nearly useless.

Look for chinese food "near current location" and it won't find jack shit.
Ask it to find the same thing near a particular city and it'll find two that you've already driven past

At home it can't find my local walmart, but can find two that are twenty miles away and built later....

It couldn't find my favorite local watering hole (Platz's), but displays a resturant icon
in the proper location and then identifies it when you poke the icon...
(not that I need a GPS to find my favorite bar/steakhouse)

I can safely say that if you want to actually find a walmart in the middle of iowa
(to buy a pack of flashlight batteries, a bottle of aspirin or a fuel filter)
you are best off using the Rand-McNally road atlas that walmart sells because it has a national index of walmart stores in the front of the atlas

The other "glitch" that the 1200 has is that it sometimes takes a couple seconds too long to recognize that you've turned (particularly in slow moving urban traffic)
and that can result in a misleading map display.

I am looking for a handheld topo GPS, but it's going to have to be one that is intended for "crossover use" because the normal hiking ones don't adjust well to moving at interstate speeds.

I think one of the coolest features that could be included in a street navigation unit is a terrain avoidance mode, basically the ability to choose routes based not only on time, distance, use of freeways or avoidance of toll roads, but to facilitate avoiding steep grades when you are towing something....

Or avoiding potentially deadly steep grades when driving in winter weather.

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[MAKG]

I've only seen one true crossover GPS for sale now (though I'd guess that situation will change). And it's a Magellan. It doesn't appear to be very well reviewed. Some of the TomToms have an "off road" mode, though I'm not sure what it does. TomTom maps do not have terrain at all.

I have a really old Garmin handheld (no maps or anything, but it DOES have track logs, user-input POIs, lat/lon and UTM entry, etc.), and it works just fine at highway speed. I think it's a 215. What it doesn't do well is estimate walking speed (go figure). It seems to have been intended for marine applications. Its ETA estimates assume constant heading... and it reports the destination's bearing (useful on open water, useless on anything but an absolutely straight road).

 

[Dave R]

I don't know about the Garmin but the Delorme system works quite well, both on and off road. I've got it loaded into a spare laptop, it's never missed a beat.

But, as a back up, I also carry an early Eagle Accu-Nav GPS. It's similar to what Mike has and has accompanied me nearly around the world and always knew where it/I was. Though after a 24-hour plane ride it took it about 45 minutes to realize it was just outside of Brisbane, QLD.

And I carry paper maps and a compass when I'm headed into previously unexplored territory. As a card carrying Luddite, I never truely trust technology.

 

[Jason]

I have a Garmin quest that I use on my bike and truck. If you have the topo maps and regular it is awesome. Maps hiking trails and roads. Although sometimes it doesn't tell the whole story of the road. I have a picture of me going through a creek on a Suzuki Bandit someplace to prove that.