GPS Failure

Rockport, Texas

The sun was shining this afternoon. The wind was very gentle. The temperature was up to 60. WOW how nice after the all night rain that ended around noon. With this pretty sun it must be time for a walk on the beach.

Many others had the same thought. The mosquitoes even thought it was a nice day to be out in force. Maybe we all got more exercise slapping mosquitoes than walking. This lady was getting more exercise from jogging than from slapping. There were days in my past where jogging was great fun instead of severe knee pain like now.


Treasure hunters are allowed in the beach area. This fellow was having some luck from his actions. His coin shooter would sound off and then he would reach down to pick up something and put it in his pocket. When this picture was taken, he was on to something that he had to excavate to get to. When my walk was over, his excavating was checked out. He had smoothed it over very well like all the good hunters do.


Now it is time to plea for some help. My GPS is an Etrex yellow model from several years ago. Two years ago it was successfully used here in Texas. Today it was fired up with new batteries. After the usual long time to find the new satellites, it appeared to lock into them. My goal was to check the elevation of a place of interest. It gave weird elevations. The elevations kept on changing by several feet even when it was sitting on the ground for a half hour.

Later this afternoon it was tried out on the end of a pier where there is absolutely nothing to interfere with the signals. The scene is thus. The location is the handrail of the pier. The handrail is the standard 3’-6” high. The pier deck is about five feet above the tidal water. In other words the unit is about 8-9 feet above sea level. The read out was back and forth between -14 feet and -27 feet. My body does not have gills so it is obviously wrong. Does anybody know what is going on? Maybe time to throw it away?

It is not used often and is not really needed for my hiking, biking or paddling. Once in a while it is used for a Geocache, but not often even for that. My tag on Geocache is Texnomad.

Let us speak of hiking, biking and paddling. In the last couple of years aging has taken its toll on my body. At 63 and a life of pounding my body, it no longer needs a GPS for the three activities above. Anyplace that my body is capable of going anymore has been gone to by so many folks that a well worn trail is hammered into the ground to follow.

Now a map is needed like at Enchanted Rock Texas since there are lots of very well defined trails that intermingle with each other. However getting lost is extremely difficult to do. This makes a GPS less needed for the activities. Paddling is only done within close range of the shore where a fog bank or going blind for an hour from a migraine will not cause lethal circumstances. My goal in life for now is to live long enough to see a grandkid.

However every now and then it is fun to search out a Geocache while out trying to have tooooo much fun. TheOFM