ben.parmeter

All my thanks go to Pat for showing me how to get the data off of my Garmin ForeTrex 201 and insert it into Google Earth. It produced beautiful products like this and this of both the Deschutes day hike in Oregon and the Cathedral Lake backpacking trip in Yosemite. I’m going to use this on all my future trips.

For those of you who want to try this at home, this may be useful. I installed GPSBabel on my Linux box today and was able to quickly grab data off of my Garmin ForeTrex 201 using the following:

gpsbabel -t -w -i garmin -f /dev/ttyUSB0 -o gpx -F out.gpx

(For windows users that have USB cables try :usb instead of /dev/ttyUSB0. If you have a serial cable, try COMx where x=the COM port you’ve connected your GPS device to.)

Then I installed Google Earth (used Automatix for Ubuntu), but unfortunately it’s an older version than what is available for Windows so the GPX functionality hasn’t yet been introduced. Fortunately, however, there is an alternative. Google Earth also accepts a KML (KeyHole Markup Language) format which is easily created with GPS Babel. Just type the following.

gpsbabel -i gpx -f in.gpx -o kml -F out.kml

Once you do this, drag the KML file into Google Earth and blam-o, you’ve got a map. I was perplexed at first because my data wasn’t showing up, but remembered later that Pat mentioned a time-slider bar. Sure enough, at the top of the screen is the time slider and all I needed to do was slide that baby over to the right. All the data, was right there. Enjoy.

8/2/2007 – UPDATE: I’ve added some altitude charts to the gallery here and here. Also, my brother Dave has put together a YouTube video of our Deschutes trip using pictures and video from both of our cameras.

I finally posted the pictures from our rafting trip to the lower Deschutes river. The first half of the gallery are my pictures, and the second half are Dave’s pictures. So if you’re confused by the order of things, that should help explain it. Anyway, it was amazing. It was a great male bonding experience, complete with camping, beer-drinking, steak grilling, hammocking, hiking, snakes, and pure white knuckle fear. This trip was particularly great, because I got to spend some guy-time with my dad and my brother. It was a rare opportunity, because we all live so far apart. It was good for the soul. A huge thanks must go out to my Uncle Jim for organizing the whole thing.

I was a bit late in posting this set of photos, and actually got the Cathedral hiking pix up first. I guess I was just swamped with life for a while. At least I beat Dave, who promised to produce a video of this trip. I can’t wait to see what he does with that. He risked his camera getting doused and got some good footage of the rapids we went through.

Enjoy the photos. Until next time.

Have you caught on to the latest internet craze? I’m talking about the LOLCats. I am not usually one to jump on the bandwagon with these things, but after a recent trip to Yosemite I just couldn’t resist. Last weekend, a group of us drove up to Yosemite and backpacked up to the Cathedral Lakes area(check out the photos here). It was beautiful, with sawtooth peaks surrounding us and a crystal clear mountain lake below us rimmed in granite – there really is nothing like this that I’ve ever seen. The wildlife was incredibly tame, or at least it seemed that way because we had deer walking through our camp and a marmot who had no problem chomping on a tree only feet away from us. We must have been huffing too much deet, because I came up with an LOLcats reference for the marmot that had the group in stitches. Unfortunately, the mosquitoes managed to break our spirits and eventually drove us back down the trail, retreating to a lower elevation. Without further ado, starting a new internet revolution, I’m going to post the first lolmarmots picture. Comedy gold.

P.S. Stay tuned for a video of the hiking trip… that is if I get really ambitious and put one together. That also means I’ll have to learn how to use some type of linux video editing package. Any suggestions?

Interestingly enough, Big Sur comes from the original name el grande sur, or the big south. Even though this isn’t really the southernmost coast on the California coastline, it’s still southern enough to bear the name. Suzy and I set sail last weekend and spent the night down at the scenic Big Sur Campground and Cabins. We got a late start on Saturday, especially late after we stopped for an oil change, but we still enjoyed the leisurely drive down to the coast. We stopped at La Victoria’s Taqueria which has an incredible orange sauce. It’s a sort of creamy hot sauce which is no doubt vein clogging death. But I love it. You can’t help but to liberally drown each bite with the stuff. Someday I’ll probably learn that it’s made out of pure lard – but until then, I will keep on eating it. After our bellys were full, we headed on down to Big Sur with only a couple of stops on the way to pick up some food for the evening. We finally arrived at our destination, Big Sur Campgrounds and Cabins where we had reserved our own tent cabin. Staying in this little cabin with a queen bed, minimal furniture and a small deck was like fulfilling a childhood treehouse fantasy. Except, it wasn’t in a tree at all – but you just have to take my word for it. The next day we set out north to Point Lobos where we got a good bit of hiking in and observed more wildlife than we expected. After hiking for a couple hours we headed up to the Monterrey Bay Aquarium where we did a turbo walkthrough of the best exhibits. A long day of walking made us all hungry. Suzy’s mom had picked out this great vegitarian restaraunt in Pacific Grove (although the name escapes me now) and so we found ourselves munching on artichoke quesadillas, enchiladas, grilled potatoes, and more… yum. Next, we drove on to Carmel, where we walked down to the beach to watch the waves and took in some wine tasting. And that pretty much wrapped up the day.

You can find the pictures from our trip in the gallery here.

Enjoy – Until our next adventure.

Ben.