GPS as travel guide?

[Guest DrewG]

This doesn't pertain to geocaching directly, but I've been using my GPS to find various stores and restaurants with lots of success. I visit Chicago fairly frequently and am always hunting down new places to go. Not knowing the streets too well, I started using the lat/long provided by Mapblast.com (it's in the Deg.dddddd format) and it seems to work amazingly well! Only one screwup so far and that was when I entered a 42 instead of 41 for deg lat and ended up trying to find a restaurant about 10 miles east of Milwaukee instead of in downtown Chicago. (FYI, that would put it out in Lake Michigan, as I discovered) Anyone else make use of it this way? My friends think I'm nuts until I show them how well it works...

[Guest makaio]

I use mine in a similar fashion all the time, although mostly around the area where I live as I don't travel much. While not really necessary, I do as you describe and follow my gps to the location rather than using map directions. It's fun if nothing else. As for your friends, it's only a matter of time until all cell phones contain gps technology at which time most of them will certainly become enthusiasts whether they are aware of it or not

[Guest makaio]

I use mine in a similar fashion all the time, although mostly around the area where I live as I don't travel much. While not really necessary, I do as you describe and follow my gps to the location rather than using map directions. It's fun if nothing else. As for your friends, it's only a matter of time until all cell phones contain gps technology at which time most of them will certainly become enthusiasts whether they are aware of it or not

[Guest Silver]

I have also put in a street address into MapBlast and gotten the GPS location for a business here in Seattle. It worked great. I was able to find the location without knowing the area I was heading to.

 

After finding the store, I was able to find the Interstate on-ramp by using the track-back feature.

 

Silver

[Guest nhouse]

I've got a Garmin GPS III+. I've not found any businesses using the coordinate system yet but we use the business locator feature of that GPS unit all the time.

 

We do a lot of freeway driving and we can scroll up the road ahead on the little display map and it tells you what businesses are off an exit on the freeway. It's really handy if you are looking for a McDonalds or something!

 

Nathan