I have been playing around and appreciating both Google Earth and Garmin’s MapSource US Topo and City Navigator North America mapping software on my computer. The nice thing about this interface with the Garmin software and Google Earth is that you get an aerial photo view of your waypoint.
To take advantage of these tools you must have Garmin MapSource software on your computer, and you must have Google Earth loaded on your computer. I have the free version of Google Earth. I have the latest update, which is a noticeable improvement. You must be connected to the internet, and you need to create a waypoint on the MapSource product at the location to want to scout. After creating the waypoint go to VIEW in the toolbar and click on it. Select Google Earth and it will load and take you to the location you created your waypoint at.
I see it as a good scouting tool. The view I was looking at this evening showed the contrast in vegetation because the pictures must have been taken in the fall. I will create waypoints on my gps for some of those locations for bird and deer hunting.
When you look at a location using Google Earth be sure a rotate it around so that you get a feel for the vegetation and the slope conditions. If you do not rotate the view your brain will think you are looking at flat ground. I thought it was neat to look at a location where I had shot a buck.
Google Earth was not an option for us when we were on slow dialup, but now that we are on cable Internet it works great. This evening when I tried to load the update of Google Earth I encountered problems. I resolved the problems by going to Control, Add and Remove programs, and removing Google Earth. I then went for the free download at
http://earth.google.com/
