Travel Tips

The GPS was developed by the US military . It involves 24 satelites operating in six orbital planes at an
altitude of 12,500 miles, which put out coded signals to be received by small units on earth. With the magic of computer chips that can solve the several sets of simultaneous equators the reading produce, these instruments can determine their absulute location with surprising precision.
In English, this little piece of gizmotronics tells you the following:

where you are on earth within about 50mile to 100 mile
where yuo've been
where you are going
when you'll get there
what your altitude is above sea level
and, of course, the time

If you know where you want to be
you can enter the coordinates and the Gamin GPS will show you an electronic highway, if the road benda left, you turn left at the same angle.An annoying feature, however, is that coverages depending on where you are, city readings are usually not very accurate and vertical readings are fantasy.
While in the Alps, once I got a reading of 400 feetbelow sea level.Furthermore, they're not as easy as you'd hope. They have a
terminology all their own and takes a good while to get the hang of it.

As a guideline, a GPS will come in handy for traveling in remote areas without roads, if you're hiking, biking, canoeing, flying or parasailing.

And if you'll be traveling anywhere off the beaten track in the Everglades, these gizmos are choice gear.

Just don't think that it can act as your only orienteering tool, unless you've spent a lot of money or had
a lot of experience with it, bring along a good compass as well for critical measurements.