Do you carry photo equipment and a dedicated GPS ?

Daylight savings time is messing up my photography lighting and hiking.
The sun set faster than expected. We ended up off a trail we were unfamiliar with.
We walked an extra 1/2 - 3/4 miles in 42 F temperature.
Sore legs tonight totall hike 3 3/4 miles.
I'm looking at the Garmin 66ST GPS on sale $100 off from bass pro.
What are your thoughts?
A couple parks are over 600 acres in size and poorly marked.

I have an older version of that GPS that I use for hiking. It works well but is a little difficult to work with.

Have you looked at the options available for your phone. Many of my friends use apps. I'm not sure exactly what they are.

With cold winter approaching I will probably break down and buy a real hand held GPS.
Some but not all free app reviews available are okay and have a few drawbacks or performance issues, even with paid subscription or paid version.
A few seemed like a GPS novelty more than functional though.
I tried a few apps and found google maps works reasonable so far in a pinch.
Most of what I read says suggests an extra recharge battery pack because of the heavy battery drain.
Standing around or resting while recharging vs popping in 2 fresh AA batteries is something I'm considering too. Sometimes there are no or very few benches lol.
If anyone gets the brilliant idea of shopping for a GPS.
Fully read the GPS descriptions carefully line by line.
Several GPS models need a subscription for certain features.
This larger model 66ST is a little expensive up front but there is no subscription either. So the savings come later.
It uses 2 AA for 16 hours run time.
I'm pretty sure map GPS markers can be
made on the trail or before leaving home to backtrack.
Two years ago I returned a different GPS model # 30 to the wholesale club because the map subscription was too expensive to make it fully useful.
Plus the #30 screen was too tiny to be useful for maps.

vision35 wrote in post #19151696
Daylight savings time is messing up my photography lighting and hiking.
The sun set fast and we got off the trail a little we were unfamiliar with.
We walked an extra 1/2 - 3/4 miles in 42 F temperature.
Sore legs tonight totall hike 3 3/4 miles.
I'm looking at the Garmin 66ST GPS on sale $100 off from bass pro.
What are your thoughts?

Buy a map and compass, it's a hell of a lot cheaper and just as accurate.

Agree the hand held Garmin 66ST GPS is expensive.
I haven't tried using a compass for random un-marked hiking in years.

vision35 wrote in post #19151853
Thats a chunk of money and not pocket change.

You've lost me. What is?

Update: I have a bad back and hip arthritis. Getting lost is not the best option for me.
I purchased the hand held Garmin 66ST GPS. Its the best value when on sale.
I managed to get an additional $85.00 off the sale price of $349.00
There are other fancier GPS models costing even more but they are too expensive for my needs.
I added a 128 GB micro SD card as well.
Finally I purchase Energizer batteries that should never leak.
I never buy the k land wholesale club batteries. They leak all over more times than I care to count.

Glad you found something that works for you vision35.

Map and compass guy here and, sometimes, compass only guy.

vision35 wrote in post #19151696
Daylight savings time is messing up my photography lighting and hiking.
The sun set faster than expected. We ended up off a trail we were unfamiliar with.
We walked an extra 1/2 - 3/4 miles in 42 F temperature.
Sore legs tonight totall hike 3 3/4 miles.
I'm looking at the Garmin 66ST GPS on sale $100 off from bass pro.
What are your thoughts?
A couple parks are over 600 acres in size and poorly marked.

Take a look at Avenza and Alltrails - they are excellent map apps for mobile phones.