With one of the largest balloon festivals in the country happening practically in my back yard I have often wondered how so many chase vans who are unfamiliar with the area are going to get to the right back road to catch up with their own balloon and have seen more than one balloon have to stay inflated enough to pop up in sight for that chase van to find them. Now I have been wondering how many of those same balloonists might be changing over to a handheld GPS device or even automotive GPS  so they can give their chase van the coordinates or road intersections they need in order to find them? That would be geocaching taken to a whole new level! I'm going to have to ask about that next time we go out chasing one of those beauties and find out how that might work for them. If anyone has tried this let me know! Sounds pretty intriguing to me.

School’s out, the kids are home, and it's nice outside. I wonder if I can use my GPS unit to get away from the kids and find myself? Well, maybe I should use it to find adventure with the kids, in so doing perhaps to help us find each other? We can grab the handheld GPS device and take off on foot exploring the trails nearby. I like to pack a picnic and head out after work and do just that. Or we could do a day trip and take off exploring in the car using the automotive GPS unit to do that. Actually, now that I think of it I probably really don’t need to leave those kids behind to find myself after all. There are some great spots here in the Adirondacks for hiking and boating or just sightseeing, even to sit beside the lake and read while the kids splash around in the water. See ya later – its a pretty day – time for me to go pack that picnic lunch and get outdoors wandering with the kids…

A friend of mine just called, and we decided it would be fun to get together at my house.  I was mentally preparing myself for the usual “are you familiar with…” conversation and extensive directions when my friend spoke up and asked “what’s your address? I have one of those thingies in my car!”  I love it! Gotta admit that I really love my own “thingie” in my car! Automotive GPS units are such a convenience.  Of course, my Garmin nuvi has me spoiled.  Sounds like my friend feels the same way about her automotive GPS “thingie” and has learned to rely on it the same as I have mine.  I love to explore new places, but I sure love being able to find my way home again no matter where I wander and now that it is summertime I plan to do plenty of that!  Have a happy 4^th of July, and enjoy your own wandering this summer...

Most of the top manufacturers, especially Garmin, have really great interactive websites  that allow you to choose to compare several units to each other so that at a glance you can sort them out by which features you really want, which ones would only be nice perks and which ones are definitely yes or no features for you.  Do you want it to be small and thin with a great battery life so you can carry it with you to find your way back to your car? Do you want lifetime traffic?  Bluetooth?  You get the idea.  Anyway, once you have it narrowed down to possibly one or two favorites, it becomes simple to go back to Google or your favorite GPS store and see which one they have to offer, which types of accessories you will need and for what price they are offered.  I just think it totally simplifies your shopping experience.  I like simple.  After all, I would rather be spending time exploring with my GPS unit than sitting in front of a computer trying to figure out all the pros and cons or entrusting my decision to someone who doesn't even know me.  Well, good luck in your search for the best GPS units for your needs and budget, and I hope this helps.

You need to consider security measures to protect you, your stuff and your travel plans and to provide a safe trip for you and your fellow travelers. The following travel safety tips can save you a lot of trouble.

1. Make sure your passport and a visa are up-to-date before you try to travel abroad.

2. Do not forget to carry information for emergency calls. This can be very useful in times of crisis.

3. If you travel abroad, learn about the culture in which you plan to visit. This saves a lot of confusion and can ensure a safe holiday. Learn some key phrases of the local language, such as “Help” in case you are separated from your tour guide or friends. If you are traveling alone, you may want to hire a guide who speaks at least two languages, yours and the native language.

4. Walking in a group is safer than going alone, especially in sparsely populated areas. Also a group will add to your enjoyment. Thieves and robbers usually target those who travel alone.

5. Always use covered luggage tags and try to prevent your address on luggage tags from opening. You can use both the address of your destination and of course your home in case of lost luggage.

6. Keep your ears open to your inner voice and trust your intuition. Women, single parents and parents of small children are easy prey for crime against tourists. Be vigilant at all times when on your own.

7. Bring along your own automotive GPS device. Several of the automotive GPS units can also be carried easily in your pocket. Not only if you drive yourself, even if you are using taxis in an unfamiliar location your own GPS navigation will help assure that the taxi driver doesn’t try to take advantage of you and take creative “shortcuts” in order to charge you extra. Bringing your automotive GPS systems will also help you navigate on foot while in a new city while you get your bearings and make sure you are able to get back to your hotel at the end of the day.

Again, it is fun to travel to new places, but be sure to use common sense and be safe while doing so.

Lately, GPS systems have begun to mature from barebones models to more sophisticated GPS receivers that additionally allow you to play music and even make calls from your car. Some GPS systems and satellite radios are becoming the newest add-ons for brand spanking new automobiles and some car rentals, and there are a number of fascinating and ever more affordable choices to upgrade your existing vehicle. Today’s GPS units work nicely with small or internal GPS antennas providing visible and voice prompts for upcoming turns, and adjusting while you take a detour (including those now familiar words 'recalculating, recalculating...'). These systems can usually store the major highway maps for complete regions plus detailed maps for a particular area in addition to points of interest, addresses and even phone numbers for your convenience.

There’s so much to see and do. Be sure you don’t miss a thing while driving or hiking, for instance touring around national parks and other scenic vistas. Now you could have the power and security to make any trip an easy and memorable one whether or not you are working, sightseeing or a little of both. You will not get lost or miss out on the special points of interest with the aid of a GPS receiver, whether you explore in your own automobile, a rental car or RV. With multilingual flip-by-flip visible steering, voice prompt navigation and simple to learn graphics, traveling from place to place has never been easier or more visitor friendly. Additionally, automotive GPS systems offer you instructions for the most popular driving routes, but allow you to get off the beaten path and to take the roads much less traveled. You’ll get to see and experience more than you ever could have on your own.

When vacationing in unfamiliar cities or countries GPS also comes in handy and helps you enjoy exploring without worry. Now you’ll be able to navigate to new locations with GPS mapping specific to the areas you’re traveling in. GPS navigation systems are nearly indispensable additions to your travel gear. Just grab a GPS unit, relax and enjoy your journey!

Have you ever been driving down the highway and see something great that you just Need to get back to later, but you are on your way to an appointment or maybe traffic is just crazy, and you just can’t stop right this minute, what do you do?  Well, if the automotive GPS you are traveling with is a Garmin nuvi it is no problem at all.  All you need to do is just reach out to that handy touch screen and ask to “view map”, then click on “vehicle” and “save location”, name it (anything at all if you are in traffic, just to be able to find it again), and you are done!  How simple is that?  Gotta love those GPS touch screen features on the go! Next time you see, oh a terrific garage sale or an interesting restaurant or maybe a side trip you want to take on your way home from vacation all you need to do is just save that location on your Garmin nuvi GPS.  Nice feature.  Simplify your life, and save that location.

While all are lightweight, the 1260T is nearly half the weight of the other two at about 4 ounces – I’m likin’ that in my pocket again if I head out on foot or bike ‘cause it won’t be bulky. Okay, good… All three have rechargeable batteries; with battery life between 3 and 8 hours on each, the 550 beats the other two out again, but I will just keep them charging while I am in the car. No problems there. All three come with preloaded maps and have the ability to load more – nice. All three use voice prompts and speak streets by name, I like that a lot, but none of these have voice activated navigation; well, I don’t really need that one, and it keeps the price reasonable.

All three will do detour calculations to get me back on track, but only the 550 and the 1450 will figure out the most direct route for me; although, all three models will help me avoid highways or toll roads – savin’ me money; and the 1260T and 1450 both include ecoroute to save gas. I like that. Oh, the 1260T is the one with Bluetooth, a handy feature to have; and that one comes with Lifetime Traffic included, oooh, nice. They all have world clock and a picture viewer, anti-theft (Great Idea) and are easily personalized with Garmin Garage. Ahhh, the nuvi 550, is waterproof and great for motorcycles, boats and geocaching! Well, I think I know which one I want for Christmas, oooops! I'm not shopping for me, I am supposed to be shopping for everyone else!

Imagine that, we bought a new computer and needed repair right away. What a nightmare, right? The bright spot was the technician who came to rebuild our nearly brand new computer. She was wonderful. Anyway, of course we talked about GPS. No big surprise there. She has a handheld GPS unit for hiking, but she says in her opinion when it comes to automotive GPS there is nothing like using laptop GPS to get from one appointment to the next. After all, she has the laptop anyway; and it has a really large screen which really improves visibility as she travels from home to home, city highways or country roads, normally going places she is totally unfamiliar with. She says her portable GPS device is fine when riding her bike or hiking, but when it comes to highway speeds and traffic, she wants the best visibility at a glance that is possible. She feels she gets that with the large screen of her own computer and her laptop GPS receiver.

There are lots of options. Perhaps you need a case, a holster or lanyard to protect your handheld GPS units, but help you remain primarily hands free on your adventure. Or you might just want to spruce it up and individualize it. With the right GPS accessories you can fix it up, protect it or update it without a great deal of trouble, and probably save yourself some serious cash while you are at it by breathing some new life into an old friend.

If you know your location before you leave you can use the pre-plan trip optional which is nice for the fact you can see how long it will take you to get to your desired location. The GPS system also shows where you can stop for gas, find local attractions and restaurants so you can eat. The one really cool thing about this system is that you can use the 3-D option so the views are more detailed.

Our daughter-in-law had quite a drive ahead of her this weekend to visit her mom.  It would take at least two hours each way on strange roads.  Mom had moved to a new place, and she did not know how to get there yet.  The roads were strange and it started raining heavily while she was on the way.  Traffic was building, and things were getting pretty confusing.  It was a good thing she had her automotive GPS unit with her that announced the streets by name for her and told her which lane to be in for the upcoming turn.

Also, while she was on the road, our son called to check to see where to find their son’s shoes.  With the Bluetooth technology on her automotive GPS, she was able to tap the screen to answer the phone and keep on driving.  What a mom.  She sure is a pro at multitasking!

When looking for automotive GPS systems, it will all seem confusing at first due to the wide variety of pricing, features and brands. In fact there are probably hundreds of models available today. Also, the price can vary greatly from model to model, depending on the features. When searching for automotive GPS units, you first have to know what options are available. Do you want just a standard automotive GPS that can help you travel from one place to another, or do you want something more sophisticated with additional capabilities? If you just need something basic, then you should look at a price range at the lower end of the scale. Some of the options available for automotive GPS include widescreen or standard size, preloaded maps, Touch screen to easily look up addresses and services, voice-prompted, turn-by-turn directions that speak street names to your destination, and some and will calculate a more fuel-efficient route for you. Also, do you want Bluetooth capabilities?

Another thing which you might want to consider is if it is small enough and light enough to carry it with you when you get to your destination and the ability to continue to use it while wandering on foot and how long the battery will hold up; is it long enough for an all-day outing or do you only want to be able to find your car again after a day of shopping at the mall? Be sure to check to see whether it is waterproof or not; if you are considering using it on your motorcycle, bike or boat as well as in your car, this is an important factor. Several automotive GPS units are excellent to be used for either land or marine use and can be handy for that weekend fisherman.

Time for another product comparison; I am looking at two more Garmin automotive GPS units - the Garmin nuvi 255 versus the Garmin nuvi 775T. Both are excellent automotive GPS systems. The nuvi 255 is built more for the budget conscious traveler; whereas, the nuvi 775T has more options to offer and increased functional capacity. Here are the functions that are the same in both: They both have color displays to make it easy to read the screen. Both have rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, the battery lasting approximately 4 hours on the nuvi 255 and 3 hours on the nuvi 775T. Each has a high-sensitivity GPS receiver. Neither of them is waterproof, so I wouldn't recommend using them as a motorcycle GPS unit; however, waterproof is not really an issue in automotive GPS units. Both come with preloaded street maps and the ability to add more maps if you are interested, but the nuvi 775T includes transatlantic maps which can be nice when you travel to Europe. Both of these versions of the Garmin nuvi come with internal solid state built-in memory and are designed to hold 1,000 Waypoints/favorites/locations; the nuvi 755T also built to remember up to 10 routes. Each includes a basemap and accepts data cards which are not included, but it would be handy to have for additional memory. Neither of these Garmin nuvi versions includes voice-activated navigation, so you are not able to operate the device with spoken commands; sorry about that one as that is a nice feature, but is yet another perk to look for in other automotive GPS systems in future reviews.

Both include choice of route setup for either faster time, shorter distance, or off road and route avoidance to help you avoid highways, tolls etc., also handy features to have in automotive GPS units. Both of these versions of Garmin nuvi also are FM traffic compatible (with receiver and lifetime traffic included with the nuvi 755T) and are MSN® Direct compatible and have a speed limit indicator which displays speed limit for most major roads in the U.S. and Europe. Both also have the functionality of the Where Am I? feature to help you find the closest hospitals, police & gas stations, nearest address & intersection and ecoRoute^TM which calculates a more fuel-efficient route and the ability to add custom POIs (points of interest), all great features to have in unfamiliar territory. Personalize either Garmin nuvi version by adding Garmin Garage^TM vehicles and voices, a free service at Garmin where you can download car-shaped icons and custom voices to your device. Photo navigation in order to navigate to geotagged photos, World travel clock, currency & unit converter, calculator and picture viewer are also nice features available in both.

Now for more differences between the two: The Garmin nuvi 755T has a few more features which the nuvi 255 does not. The nuvi 755T has higher display resolution and a 4.3-inch diagonal screen compared to the 3.5-inch screen of the nuvi 255. Nuvi 755T also includes 3-D building view which displays buildings in 3-D, the ability to auto sort multiple destinations which provides the most direct route, and Bluetooth® wireless technology so you can connect to your phone for hands-free calling. Garmin Locate^TM marks your position when the GPS receiver is removed from the windshield mount - this can be really handy to help you remember where you parked your vehicle. The included MP3 player, Audio book player and FM transmitter with headphone jack/audio line-out will entertain you on your travels.

Oh, I nearly forgot to mention that both of these Garmin nuvi automotive GPS systems come with Garmin Lock^TM anti-theft feature and touchscreen convenience. Well, I hope that helps to sort out the differences and advantages of each of these Garmin nuvi versions for you. Happy traveling!