A little more passage of knowledge here from my map project...

This is a GREAT tutorial to get you started on seializing XML in .NET using C#

http://www.codeproject.com/csharp/xml_serializationasp.asp

But there are a couple "things to remember" when you are using serialization operations...

You MUST have at an empty default constructor for serialization to work, even if you override it and never actually use it in your code.

Public properties that are not value types but use accessors, MUST have a setter, even if it is empty, for that item to be serialized.

SPent about 4 hours wondering WHY IN THE HE|| my stuff wasn't serializing till I realized these two points...