there obviously is no place to look at a map so how do i know where I am at? I was going to go to the southeast corner of the county to explore that area and I ended up going toward Tacoma according to the road signs. I can look at a map all day but I would just be wasting daylight. some rough roads out there and I had only enough gas to go where I was going without tapping into my reserve.
with a broken reserve light wire I could have gotten stuck going up a mountain and trying to flip the valve to reserve.
no particular question here but should I get a compass? gps/navigation system is a little out of my budget.
a compass by itself isnt all that usefull except to tell you what direction your are heading. there are classes to teach ya to navigate by map in the woods which is probably overkill for road use, also any detailed map of backroads covering a large area will be pretty hefty. and they get out of date. ive also been on roads that werent on any map. just a semipaved stretch of dirt between one county road and another that the locals used.
.your cheapest option if you have a smartphone or tablet is to use the built in maps, that will do in a pinch. or if your more adventurous then motionx for the iphone ($2) or back country navigator pro for android ($10) will cover most anyones mapping needs (road, topo, noaa).both have offline capabilites for mapping and the amount you can carry depends on phone capacity ( the 150mile radius around my house with road topo and nooa at max resolution is roughly 1GB).
most navigation systems are designed for turn by turn functionality and are pretty horrible as an actual map. but you can always get a supercheap one, and stuff it in a tank bag. my personal preference at that point would be to buy a cheap android tablet and use it as a gps. its cheaper than the higher end units with far more functionality.
