Modern Technology

Last week I had the opportunity to help a fellow consultant with his sampling in the "real" southern Illinois.  He emailed me a shapefile of the fields he wanted sampled several days before.  I converted it to a Google Earth format and zoomed in as close as possible.  It was close enough to see towns and have a relative idea where things were.

I left home very early in the morning.   My friend led me close to the first field I needed to work on and I used GPS to make sure I was there.  I continued to sample, stopping  a total of 7 times.  The whole time, I used the GPS and the Google Earth map to navigate.  It was amazing that I was able to find and sample all the fields.  Without GPS, we might have spent hours just on directions.