[Paddlewise] Garmin 12XL & Topo!GPS

I acquired a lot of waypoints on my Garmin GPS 12XL in the
last year, including trips in Nipigon Bay and the Apostle
Islands, and I acquired not one but four programs for
downloading the data from the 12XL to my computer, but until
last night I had not found the time to put them together.
What prompted me to finally do so was losing all the data in
my 12XL last weekend. I had plugged the 12V power cable into
the 12XL but not into the cigarette lighter of my car and
left it that way for several hours. Apparently, when you do
that, it disconnects the internal backup battery. The next
time I turned it on, the 12XL gave me a message that all my
data had been lost. This included not just my waypoints, but
the time offset and other configuration elements. :-(

So, with another trip to the Apostles coming up, I decided to
reenter the waypoints for prominent geographic features in the
islands. For this I chose the Topo!GPS program, which has a CD
of USGS topographic maps of the Apostles. With the older version
of Topo!, I had found the waypoint coordinates by placing the
cursor at a waypoint location and writing down the coordinates,
which appeared at the bottom of the screen. I then manually
entered these coordinates and descriptions in the 12XL during
the drive to the Apostles -- a very tedious process.

The new GPS version makes it much easier. To create a waypoint
list, you just click on the map where you want to place a
waypoint. Next you type the name and a short description of the
waypoint in a dialog box. When the dialog box closes, the
waypoint is added to a list at the bottom of the screen. When
the list is finished, you connect your GPS unit to your
computer's serial port, turn it on, select "Interface" on the
Garmin, and then follow the instructions in the Upload Wizard
to copy the data to the GPS unit.

The waypoints are saved in files that are separate from the map
data files, so you can create a waypoint file for each trip if
you like. You can also merge files, and, of course, you can also
download waypoints, routes, and tracks from your GPS unit to
Topo!GPS and save them. You can do this whether or not they are
in the geographic area covered by the map.

The Apostle Islands are included in a CD set that covers Isle
Royale National Park, Voyageurs National Park, the Boundary
Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, the entire Minnesota shore of
Lake Superior, and the Twin Cities metro area. A waypoint file
that includes over 2000 BWCAW campsites can be downloaded from
the Topo! Web site at http://www.topo.com/boundary.shtml

Now to acquire maps and GPS programs for areas not covered by
Topo!...

Chuck Holst


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