Originally Posted by
talbert
Can anyone elaborate on just what steps (how much work) are required to take a route stored on the unit and upload it to a PC, then how to overlay that say on googlemaps or US topo? Does it require a lot of "fudging and messing around" or is it pretty straight forward.
Being a Mac user, I don't know quite what's available in the Windows world, but there's Mac freeware that will read directly from a GPS and save as KML (e.g., LoadMyTracks). Google Earth can also read directly from a GPS connected to your PC. You can then save your GPS track from Earth as KML or KMZ (the zip-compressed version of KML).
You can upload KML (or KMZ) to any website where you can get to it with a URL. In Google Maps, you can type the URL into the search field where you'd normally type the name of a location, and your GPS tracks get drawn on Google Maps.
If you want to get fancier, Google documents the Maps API and the Google Earth API, with examples.