GPS and Geocaching

This year I gave myself a valentines day gift; a GPS device. Big 5 was selling a basic unit for $75 and after a little study I decide that it met all my needs so I bought it. This unit has a black & white display and will not handle topo files directly but I will always have a paper topo so that is not a big deal and to upgrade to color and topo interface would cost an extra $100.

Then I went geocaching. Crystal and I went to the botanical garden on Fair Oaks and found the first cache after just a little looking but the second cache seems to be missing. It was fun to just wander around the park with a gps and figuring out how it works.

Now, geocaching is fun and I like the fact that it gives me speed and altitude but I think GPS is over hyped. I like map and compass work, Reading topos and preplanning hikes as well as using topo and compass in the field and GPS kind of disregard that skill set and I think that understanding map and compass is better that using GPS to get location to three decimal minuets.