A few quirks with the Garmin

I've been working on a tutorial post about adding free maps to a Garmin eTrex, and ran into a few quirks while getting screenshots.

When I first set up my eTrex 20 I used topographical maps from GPS File Depot.  The maps are very detailed but were not capable of using routes, at least from the GPS itself (never tried it in Basecamp).  Once I picked up a micro SD card I switched to the Open Street Maps national map, and since I could generate driving directions right from the GPS (and also since I've only really gone to parks or short trails where elevation lines wouldn't really do all that much) I never switched back to my original topo maps.  In fact, the only time I touched the topo maps at all was to move the map files from the internal storage to the card.

I was outside with my son for a little while yesterday and brought my GPS with me to take screenshots.  When I went to switch to the topo maps to show the difference, they didn't work.  When I went to Basecamp to reload the maps, they still didn't work.

The solution was simple - I always click any "Advanced options" button when using software of any type, and the advanced options when you load a map from Basecamp is where you can select what portion of a map to load.  Since I have plenty of storage I just want the whole thing, but since I clicked the Advanced button it only loaded one small part of the state instead of the whole thing.  Since the area is not near where I was using my GPS, I basically just ended up with a blank map.

So yeah, the quick fix was to just accept that the software knew what it was doing and let it load the map itself.  Everything works great now.

I've been working on a few posts this week and should have them up pretty soon.  They would have been done sooner, but my son is in Cub Scouts and it's the Pinewood Derby tomorrow and the past week has been busy with the car.  Fun stuff!