sup909

LL Bean's Escape Day pack is an excellent size. Big enough to hold all of your gear, but can easily collapse down when you need it. $60 too. My favorite light hiking or day/weekend pack. http://www.llbean.com/llb/shop/57203?feat=1098-GN2

Explorist users. I am wondering if you could fill me in on some details about the explorist basemap. On some of the images I have seen it appears that the basemap has shaded relief on it, but I have not been able to fully verify with an screenshots with some mountainous areas. If it does have shaded relief, what is the level of detail on it? I am slightly curious compared to some of the Garmin units where the base map doesn't appear to have relief, but the topos seem much more accessible via third party. Is the basemap in the explorist series the same through the entire line (GC-710?). Might be interested in getting a GC for my wife and perhaps a higher one for me and I am curious if an accurate enough shaded relief would due for the limited trail hiking I do.

Hmmm.... Sounds like the screens are similar to the Trimble units I used, as those were resistive as well. I am still hanging on the fence then for the whole touch screen GPS.

Been doing a bit of research on these two devices and I am curious what people's experience is with the touch screens. My limited use with touch screen based GPS devices (professional Trimble units for survey work) has been less than exciting and I am slightly hesitant to go that route for my recreational use.

I have seen that the explorist 310 has just been released this month and have only seen cursory posts about it online on the whole. The 510 and up seem to have pretty good reviews and the GC seems to be a favorite among those who are looking just for the geocaching aspect. Has anyone gotten a hand on one yet or know of any reviews of it online yet? Information seems to be scant.