Parsing Xml With jQuery without Using XPath

i need to upgrade to the latest jQuery version, and the Xpath extension did not work for me. I have not found any good new resources about code for parsing xml, the xml example is in the code window-

as you can see, each placemark can contain different types of tags, so
i need to just be able to access the coordinates by giving different
paths like:

for (var j=0; j<placemarks.length/3; j++) {
      var coords = $('Document/Folder:eq('+1+')/Placemark:eq('+j+')/
LineString/coordinates', xml).text();
etc...

is there any good way to do this?

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<kml xmlns="http://earth.google.com/kml/2.0">
        <Document>
                <Folder>
                        <name>Final_Label_geom</name>
                        <open>1</open>
                        <Placemark>
                                <Style>
                                        <IconStyle>
                                                <color>ffc0c0c0</color>
                                        </IconStyle>
                                </Style>
                                <Point>
                                        <extrude>1</extrude>
<coordinates>-77.988788,30.779793,0.000000 </coordinates>
                                </Point>
                        </Placemark>
                <Placemark>
                                <Style>
                                        <LineStyle>
                                                <color>ff000000</color>
                                                <width>1</width>
                                        </LineStyle>
                                </Style>
                                <LineString>
                                        <tessellate>1</tessellate>
                                        <extrude>1</extrude>
                                        <coordinates>-96.621063,33.166782,0.000000
-101.993915,34.013136,0.000000 </coordinates>
                                </LineString>
                        </Placemark>

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