Tall Tales & Falsehoods

What a great weekend. I have been planning a little outing for my father, my and I for about two months now. The whole time I wanted to keep it a secret. To kick start everything I sent an cryptic email to both my brother and father to meet me at exit 447 off of I40 in Tenn. I didn’t give them any other directions other than that and the time. Noticing that them may require some special gear for the trip I sent them other email stating to bring a bunch of random stuff to try and throw them off of the what we were actually going to be doing. So when my brother and I arrived at Exit 447 at the allotted time to meet my father they were pleasantly surprised to find out that we were going on a whitewater trip.

None of us have ever been on a white water adventure before so It was a great family experience. I booked everything online at . It turned out perfect. They were a smaller outfitter and it ended up being just us three plus the guide on on own raft. We tackled 3 class four rapids and a few class three as well along the Pigeon River. It really was a great time for the Pope boys to get together and have a little fun.

After returning home on Sunday , I decided to call up Mikey and see if he wanted to take the canoe out for a little bit. After a short stop at the inlet where we experienced our first low tide canoe trip (we were stupid) we headed over to the Intercoastal/Waccamaw. I have always heard of Sandy Island but never knew exactly where/what it was. To sun it up, it is a an island located in the Waccamaw River system that has a little community on it. There is a public school boat that takes kids back and froth from the island to the bus stop as well as waterway taxis that do the same for the islanders. It was a fun trip and we even got to see Brookgreen Gardens back door.

Thanks to the love of my work I have be able to start to explore the world of Google Maps. In doing so I have got to apply for a Google Maps API, and start a little on programing. I am very new to this but have found a joy in experimenting with all of the features of it. From a very basic point of view I have learned how to plot instances on a map, change marker icons, add info text and photos, I have even started to learn how to plot tracks from my GPS.

This last feature is very exciting. I can now combine a few of my new hobbies together and share them with others thanks to Google Maps. The other day I recently tracked one of my new adventures. My friend Mikey (RedLine13) and I plotted our first canoe trip along the Waccamaw into Kingston Lake. By combining my track that I set-up on my Garmin 60CSx and a communicator (GPSBabel), I was able to export a KML file that I uploaded to Google Earth. Now I can view my journey through Google Earth (if I was thinking I would have taken photos along the journey and geoTagged them as well) as well as create a My Maps section and share with you here.

View First Canoe Trip in a larger map

I have always been into maps and now this gives me a reason to learn even more. I know there is a lot that you can do with them and have a few little projects that I want to get up and running. But for now I have to learn more info than I think I can (JavaScript). However if I can get the basics down I can port that knowledge over to future projects.