Quote Originally Posted by beowulf67 View Post
Thanks for the info.
A friend at work has a Garmin, not sure what model, but it seemed pretty cool. It has all the bells and whistles. Does the basemap include local roads or just the main highways?
Only some major roads! You'll have a choice of software. With my Magellan I could get marine, road or topographical. Although I go kayaking, marine software would be so much overkill. I rarely use these features when on Coast Guard duty (local knowledge and all)! This is only for your serious mariners.
The road software will tell you turn by turn from A to B. For a hand held this might not be that great as there are dedicated units with larger screens and voice commands that are quite reasonably priced. With the hand held unit it is harder to navigate various screens or input addresses and stuff.
I have the topographical software that greatly enhances the basemap. It shows all roads and geographical infomation. As with all software (except driving) puting in a goto gives you a direct line to the place you want to go (as the crow flies) regardless of any physical object that is actually in you path be it a mountain, skyscraper or lava pit.
As I said the basemap installed on a handheld will be adequate for geocaching. The topo software isn't going to make finding the cache easier but it does make the gps more useful in the end. You'll find though that in the end you could've bought yourself a nice kilt for the price of that gps peripherals .