I love fooling around with Google Earth. Not only is a great time-waster, but there’s also a ton of stuff you can do with it.

Unfortunately, importing your own GPS tracks was formerly limited to those users who purchased the $20 a year upgrade. At least until someone found a way around it.

Free GeoTools is a fantastic blog dedicated to doing awesome stuff with your GPS on-the-cheap, and they’ve got a write-up on a Windows freeware program called GPS Trackmaker. It lets you easily save your GPS tracks in Google Earth-friendly KML format, and once you get them into Google Earth you can email screen shots, do fly-throughs in 3-D, and take an automated, animated tour of the trail following your waypoints.

It’s all great, and it’s all free. Here’s a screen grab of the Matilija Creek trail I just did. You can see our off-trail scramble up that horrible mountain on the left:

GPS TrackMaker looks like a pretty powerful program, too. I’ll be fooling around with it this week to see if I can clean up all my tracks and make them Google Earth-friendly.Because if there’s a way to allow y’all to download animated tours of these hikes, I’m gonna do it.

Until then, though, there’s tons of great information on Free GeoTools if – like me – you’ve bought a GPS unit but still aren’t 100% sure how to use it.

by Casey Schreiner

Founder and Editor of Modern Hiker, Author of "Day Hiking Los Angeles." "Discovering Griffith Park," and "Cloud Spotting." Walking Meditator, Native Plant Enthusiast.