Rural addresses are often inaccurate and sometimes off by a mile or more. We have GPS mapped almost all of the California wine region rural tasting rooms that are generally open to the public. We are adding the in-town winery tasting rooms in 2008. Some that are "by appointment only" are generally open to the public if you show up at their door or call shortly before your arrival so we tried to include as many of those as we could find.
For KML files that load into Google Earth please visit this page. Google Earth will give you an amazing 3 dimensional map experiance that is more than worth the short learning curve.
Convert data files
Please visit www.gpsbabel.org for information on converting data between program formats. GPSBabel will do most converstions but setup isn't user friendly. Unzip the free software into /programs/gpsbabel file and use GPSBabelGUI.exe for a better interface. You'll also need to create a shortcut and drag it into your Start Menu / Programs file in Windows as this software doesn't use a setup program.
Other converters to check out are EasyGPS, POI Converter, and for more features GPS TrackMaker. Visit Free Geography Tools for reviews and how-tos. This should give you more than enough information to convert our Google Earth kml files to whatever file format your GPS device needs. A good search term: Google earth export gps. If you would like to upload USGS maps or images to your Garmin then check Moagu.
For our Garmin Map60CSx we convert the KML file to a .gdb file and upload with Garmin MapSource. Or convert to GPX and upload with EasyGPS.
How we navigate
We stuff our notebook computer on top of the console between the seats of our van. We use Streets & Trips for route planning and for watching our progress during the trip. We connect our Garmin 60CSx to a USB port and use Google Earth for information on the topography around us. You can use Google Earth without an Internet connection but you need to download the images for the area you plan to visit before you unplug from the Internet.
We mark the winery locations in both Google Earth and S&T. Those Google Earth locations are then uploaded to our server for you to download as kmz or kml files and paste into your desktop copies of GEarth or GMaps.
You can export your S&T push-pin locations to Google Earth with a CSV / Excel file but if you then try to export from Google Earth to Google Maps with a KML file it doesn't often work. The KML file requires serious editing of the underlying XML tags and data.
Have fun!!
