tax-man

Hi Traditional Bill - I am sorry you were disappointed with the size of the crowd, but as one of the event organizers, I can assure you the event achieved "mega" status. As others have pointed out, we had around 525 signatures at GCDART. Thank you for being one of the 525! We carefully scrubbed the logs to remove duplicates and improper entries, reviewed these with the GS lackey who attended the event, and submitted the logs to Groundspeak, who certified it as a mega event. The following years, we had even more attendees than the first mega. But while the event met the qualifications for a mega, I can understand why it might appear to be smaller than it actually was. First, it is held in a HUGE 8,000 park, one of the largest municipal parks east of the Mississippi. The park is home to nearly 50 geocaches, with many more in the immediate vicinity. It has a campground, extensive hiking and biking trails, boat and bike rentals, and a golf course. There is a lot to do, and people tend to spread out, so you may not see everyone at the same time. I hope you will have the opportunity to come back soon, and we are always welcome to new ideas and suggestions for improvement.

I recently replaced my eTrex Vista with a Colorado 400t. The Vista has a few more features than the basic yellow model, but is otherwise similar. I found the eTrex to be very easy to use and quite accurate. Of course, it's a basic unit and doesn't have all the bells and whistles, but I found it to be an excellent basic GPS. The only issue I had is that it couldn't pick up satellites as easily as later units (e.g., Garmin GPSmap 60CSx), and with even moderately wooded areas, I would lose the satellites when others with me had solid signals. As long as yours doesn't lose satellite reception, you should have a great basic GPS. Enjoy! (P.S., I LOVE my Colorado 400t. It got a bad reputation because of earlier firmware, but it's great now with the latest firmware!)

I looked at the info on the Nuvi 500/550. It looks interesting, but really looks like a street GPS with a few outdoors features added. Tiger Direct has a fairly unbiased comparison of the Nuvi 500 vs. Colorado series. Go to Google and search for "nuvi 550", then in the Sponsored Links section, click on Garmin Nuvi 500 PreOrder (most likely the first link on the search results page). Scroll down to the table at the bottom, which shows what you gain and lose with the 500 series. Rick (tax-man)