Trans America Trail - 2008

Review – Garmin eTrex Vista Cx.

• This was another little life-saver. It was probably the best gadget I bought and it never let me down. I bought the Garmin City Navigator 2008 maps on an MicroSD card and inserted that in the back. After the TAT I did some riding to get to LA and it was spot on.
• Its not as easy to work with as the Zumo and some of the other ones but it makes up for that by being very small and light. It almost weighs the same as the two AA batteries it takes!
• I bought 3200mAh batteries and a US charger. Again, I was over prepared thinking it’s have to change batteries on the trail – not necessary, these batteries lasted two full days of riding. Some people hard wire their GPS to the bikes battery but this isn’t necessary with this GPS.
• It wasn’t cheap, about 200 pounds, but it is one of the better eTrex units. As mentioned elsewhere it can store 10,000 waypoints. It has a bread crumb feature, barometer and a host of other things.
• It did lose signal in the avenue of the giants but that could be expected. It only lost the signal intermittently though so it didn’t affect the routing.
• This would be the choice of GPS in my opinion for the TAT – small, light weight, reliable, water proof to a point. Perfect.