I've owned my GPS, a Garmin eTrex Vista HCx for a couple years now, and I'm still learning how I can benefit from it. It's taken me a long time to learn the Basecamp software that came with it, mainly out of laziness. I work with frustrating computer programs and work, and that leaves me with little motivation to learn new programs at home, but I've been interested in publishing routes from my GPS to this blog, so I've done a little investigating. I've found a few ways to do it, but the only one I've understood to the point of getting it to work is through the MapMyRide.com site. I can upload .gpx files from my Garmin, save them as routes, and then it creates programing code that I can copy and paste into a blog entry, and the route shows up here on the blog. Easy enough for me. It seems to default to regular Googlemaps "street" mode, and I'd prefer the "satellite" or "topo maps" modes, but you can view these by clicking the "View Full Screen" link on the map, and it will take you to and expanded page to see those views (once on the full screen page, there's a selector in the upper right of the map).
The whole point of trying to do this is to share rides, runs, and hikes on this blog. Seeing as I don't have recent trips of any sort to show off, I posted a trail run from Yosemite done last February to at least try out the process. In the future, I should be able to share notable adventures and interesting routes via my actual GPS tracks just like this:
