Garmin portable GPS

My father in law has recently moved up to our arctic wonderland and is getting used to some of the minor differences to life in Alaska compared to his former life in the lower 48. There are the usual things dealing with the cold and the winter’s darkness and the outside conditions of snow and ice packed roads but one that has amused me is his desire to find his way around the vastness of what is Alaska and the varied terrain found here.

I’ve talked about my Saturday breakfast with several friends before so it is no surprise that Charlie looked forward to making the trek with me as I get out every Saturday morning with Levi, my trusty golden retriever for our meal, some good laughs and stories, and the several chores that need to be completed before we return home. As I was warming my rig before leaving the house Charlie gets in and shows me his new Garmin Nuvi 660 portable navigation system.

Whether fishing, flying, or driving Charlie makes sure he has the latest technology ‘toys’ available . . . like the time we upgraded from our manual ice auger to a motorized ice borer with nice sharp blades . . . or the fish finder that showed us exactly where they were in the lake, the exact depth, and did everything but put them on our hooks.

I’d even go as far as to say this is one of Charlie’s top technology purchases of the decade. I had never seen one in person but had seen the television ads with the basketball player bending down and giving the couple one to find their way home. I don’t think I have ever had that feeling of “maybe I should get one of those” but every once in a while I have found myself on the internet looking up a place and printing out directions from MapQuest.

He shows me that it will guide us to a specific address, store, restaurant, or hotel. There are thousands of items preprogrammed into it so you just pick which you want to travel to and it will tell you where to go.

We search the ‘food’ category and there is Village Inn listed along with many others so we touch the screen and off we go. We head out of the driveway and ‘the voice’ (she sounds so nice) tells me to go .4 of a mile to the intersection. I’m curious if this will guide me the way I would normally go or give me some other way. It did not take long . . . about .2 of a mile before she told me to turn left . . . but I wanted to turn right to get on the freeway.

I gave in and followed directions as I have been trained well by my wife who usually lets me steer the car while she drives. I have found it easier to just let her drive everywhere so I don’t have to make those observations on which way to go. We drove south for half a mile and were told to turn west then back south for a bit before we were told to turn west again. This put us on the correct street and alerted us that we were approximately five miles from our destination and that we would arrive in seven minutes.

It was pretty neat and it gave you a map that moved along and actually showed you the curves, cross streets, and would alert you with voice commands to upcoming turns.

If this thing was mounted on your dashboard you could have plenty to watch . . . I mean the road folks . . . Watch out for that truck! You can download several accents in both male and female voices, one sounds like Sean Connerly. I never have to take my eyes off the road with the Garmin Nuvi 660 as I just listen for the voice prompts and turn accordingly. The only problem I see is that it will limit your radio, cd, or ipod play trying to hear the soft voice coming from the GPS.

We used the Garmin to make our rounds to various businesses and if we varied from the given course it would tell us that it was ‘recalculating’ (it’s polite way of telling us we were idiots for not following the directions) and would nudge us back on course.

When we had completed all of our chores and running around it was easy to get us back home from any location in the U.S. simply by touching the Home button. It quickly recalculated and off we went arriving the minute it was telling us as it had already figured the slight traffic delay by Merrill Field airport.

Charlie will give it a good workout later this week as he is driving one of our work rigs across Alaska to Tok then through Canada to Haines to catch the ferry to Juneau. Hopefully it will have great reception and the satellites to navigate the thousand miles to our capitol. I am still not sure if I would spend the two hundred bucks for one but if you travel a lot or you live in a big city and need that extra help getting around then it may be just right for you.

Either way I am still amazed by the gadgets we have today . . .

Ice