Navigating on and off the grid with custom POIs

Happy New Year’s Listers,

To offset all the holiday eating, we have been doing a lot of walking the past week, more than usual. We decided to explore a 6 mile route that starts on a major street, goes through some wetlands, through fields, parks, across a highway and a school before looping back to our house. It goes almost everywhere but Grandmother’s house.

The last time I walked this route was 5 years ago. I remembered marking on my PK a number of the junctions in order to know where to cut across fields and parks. The starting point was labeled Pedestrian intersection between Covell Blvd and the Wetlands. We took an Uber to a place about a quarter mile from that starting point. I had my PK GPS running with the USA User points on board. Good thing that point was there because it was no more than a break in the bushes off a very busy road with no people around to ask. I was with my wife Gena and our two Seeing Eye dogs. My dog Tank may have been on this route when I first got him 5 years ago.

It was one of those very chilly but sunny type of days but we were dressed for the occasion. We did pass other walkers and bikers but we wanted to find our way without asking and it would have been hard to describe what we were looking for anyway. The only time we thought of asking for help was when the restroom I had marked in my PK was locked and we wondered where another was.

I should have recorded a manual route for the next time we did this route but navigating from User POI to User POI worked fine. We didn’t even make a wrong turn the whole way.

This is a reminder to me when I visit new places to be generous in marking User Points as I never know when I will return and wish I had those points. I have User points recorded around the world going back to the mid-90s. One of my favorite user points I found was not mine but one recorded by Rich Irwin. We were traveling up a river in Costa Rica with my PK wrapped in plastic and a point triggered saying alligator sighting and beer shack. Of course, the alligator was no longer in that spot but we did see one further along. The beer shack was still there however. If you ever head to the Pachira lodge in Costa Rica, you will find both my points and those from Rich and maybe others.

If you ever visit Davis, rest assured we can go where we want when we want with or without sighted friends, even off the grid.

Mike