OK here's something for you Dakota/Oregon users to experiment with.
I was aware from my own tinkering that the "stopwatch" feature could be used as a secondary trip odometer since it provides running time and distance that can be turned on/off and reset independently of the regular trip odometer.
(I have no idea what they were thinking when they implemented a lap/split feature where marking a new lap erases the last one forever)
But here's the new discovery:
I have heard from a couple of sources, including Garmin tech support, that the "stopwatch" function is actually supposed to save a gpx track file which corresponds to the data accumulated while the stopwatch is running. That would seem to offer many interesting possibilities
Of course, I have not yet been able to get this to work on my own Oregon.
[Edit: It now works with a software upgrade. I had ver. 3.20 before]
The file is supposed to be called stopwatch.gpx and should be located in the garmin/archive folder on the device. [That is where it is found]
KF