Patapsco Valley State Park, Maryland

This weekend I had to stay home to get some thing done, but I did want to check out a new GPS system that I created. I'm using a Palm TX, Holux slim236 bluetooth GPS and Delorme TOPO USA 6.0. Everything worked fine at the house, even inside the house but I wanted to give it a try in the forest close to home before I wanted to rely on it out in the hinterlands. The Holux is probably the strongest GPS satellite sucker on the market that I can tell.

My hunter friend volunteered to test the GPS system with me and we started out this morning in the Avalon area of Patapsco Valley State Park. We decided we wanted to take a look at some waterfalls in a ravine. I was unable to pull in a satellite signal until we got on top of the ridge. But once it came in, it stayed in. The Holux stayed in my pocket the whole time, unlike Garmins where you have to keep them outside and then they don't work even then.

We shot a video for your enjoyment.




My hunter friend is very concerned about tracking deer, so we ended up looking for signs of deer and looking at rub areas on trees. I didn't think much would come of all this, but sure enough, we got to the top of a ridge and there was a nice big buck. Hunter friend got all excited. We trampled through the woods, ignoring the trails and zigzagged across the park. We watched the geese and ducks in the frozen pond too.