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If you have the option to turn off land cover, that might do it for you.

Did not change anything. I think this was suggested before and it did not work then either.

Is there someway I can recompile the maps without this feature included? as incomplete and inaccurate as it is (at least around here) it really serves no purpose to me and it makes the GPS little more than a route logger.

I think I asked this once before but never got a usable solution.

My GPS is mono. The GPS map colors in what it thinks are public lands in green. This shows up on my GPS as a dark blob, and nothing else will show there.

What I would like to be able to do is somehow turn off the public land shading as it does not do me any good and it is usually wrong as to the boundaries.

But the worst thing is that I cannot see whatever feature would otherwise be shown because there is just a green blob there on my GPS.

Any ideas?

Disclaimer: know nothing about this book other than it is currently free. Never heard of the author. No idea if it is a worthy book. Being free, there is no real downside to getting it.

http://www.amazon.com/Exploring-With-GPS-Navigation-ebook/dp/B00422LGFK/ref=sr_1_4?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1339901901&sr=1-4&keywords=outdoors

If this is considered an inappropriate post, I will be unoffended if a moderator removes it.

For the record, what GPSr are you using?

Garmin Etrex Vista H

You should be able to pan the GPSr to that area to see what it looks like.

Rats. The cemetary next door is still a solid mass.

I turned landcover off. Next time I am there I will see how that works. Thanks for the tips.

In Base Camp it is far superior to the older version.

Sadly, on the GPS it has an issue that I just realized yesterday. A state park I hiked in is colored in green on the map. Makes it really hard to see much of anything on my b/w GPS.

It is not useless, just very difficult to see any details. I may go back tot he older map that did not seem to color any of the parks in.

Is there some way to remove the green coloring from the maps?

@ilbob, can you give us a Lat/Lon of an example water feature?

I have a really good example shown on my blog but I can't post links for some reason. Maybe did not pay dues or something?

BTW, the latest IL map is nicer than the previous version I was using. Thanks to whoever it was that spent the time and effort to make it.

This is where I first noticed it. N42 29.889 W89 15.546

There is a good sized horseshoe pond that straddles the IL/WI state line here. It has been there for a long time. It can be easily seen from google earth or google satellite images. but is not on any map that I have been able to find except the forest preserve district's map of this forest preserve. heck the maps don't all even show the FP, and the ones that do have the boundaries wrong.

On the new IL map I just downloaded from here, at Rock Cut State Park NE of Rockford, IL an entire lake (Olsen Lake) is just missing on the east side of I39. It is a good sized lake that has been there quite a while. Oddly, it also now shows Willow Creek coming out of the west end of Pierce Lake as an "intermittant" stream as it exits the park to the west. There is nothing intermittant about that creek. On the bright side, it now shows Perryville Road (the western boundry of the park) where it really is instead of showing it 100 yards inside the western edge of the park like the previous version did. Many of the internal roads in the park are also now shown. They are not all there, but more of them are then in the previous edition.

Garmin's website allows you to view an area of your choice for some of their map products.
What does their 24K mapset show for this area?

I poked around their website and never found anywhere to look at a map. Buy yes, look no.

I noted the inconsistencies recently while hiking in a forest preserve and DNR area.

The water features shown on the GPS map are not even close to what was actually there on the ground (some of which can be plainly seen from Google satellite images). The maps also showed roads that just plain did not exist.

My wife bought me a GPS for xmas last year. Its a garmin etrex vista H.

I have been using it on my hiking excursions since I got it but mostly just to track where I have been. You can see some of the treks on my blog, but it won't let me post a link here for some reason.

I am too cheap to buy maps so I looked for free ones and came upon this place.

A few things I have run into.

There seem to be a fair number of mistakes and or omissions in the IL topo map I downloaded. Missing water features, roads and water features shown that don't actually exist. Is this common? Am I being too picky about something that I got for free? I have noted some of the same mistakes in google maps so I am wondering if the base data that both came from are the problem.

Is there a good tutorial somewhere on using the various features. I have been able to figure out the compass. It took me a while to figure out it was off by default and had to be turned on to use. In reality it did mention this in the manual but I sort of went past that part pretty quick.

I was able to use it on one hike to convince myself I was in WI when I was not real clear just where I was.

I have been able to add waypoints on the trail but, have not figured out quite how to use them for much of anything.

One other thing I have noticed. The GPS trip computer often shows a shorter distance walked than the time involved and base camp says. Sometimes it is pretty close but other times there is a substantial difference. I have come to the conclusion that the distance basecamp calculates is closer to the truth than the trip computer. It seems odd given they start at the same point and end at the same point.