Ode to my GPS Garmin nuvi 255W

A friend bought me a wonderful photography tool, my GPS, pictured on the left. Of course it was very helpful on our yearly road trip, but it had a use I didn't imagine, which I want to share. On the trip, we were driving from Key Largo north and my daughter wanted to go to one more beach before we left Florida. So as I headed north on highway 75, I zoomed in on the coast on the left and I saw there was a quick jaunt to the beach at Naples, so we took 5th avenue into the coast. The city was gorgeous for photography, and we had a nice dinner. So, until you have a GPS, you don't realize what it can do outside of the obvious "get me there." Here's what I saw from the GPS (sort of) below.

This GPS has a picture viewer, which you will love as a photographer. After a shoot, I pop in my SD card, and it creates a slide show. The screen is about 4" x 2", so it makes a bigger image than the back of my camera. I don't know how to delete 12 shots Garmin has included with the GPS, which we have to view each time, but that is my only complaint.

The Garmin runs on batteries and holds a charge for a long time, so you can plug in your cell when driving or use it out of the car to view images. 

My model also tells the arrival time, which I like when heading to a meeting etc. It is very accurate and makes up for this model not displaying the time, which is in the car anyway. Don't buy a lower end model and lose this feature. But my favorite feature is that it displays the speed limit in the bottom right. This is especially helpful on long drives when I miss the speed limit change.

I do want to include a funny story, so it doesn't happen to you. This GPS used to fail everytime I didn't follow the route and made it recalculate. One day I was looking through all the functions while waiting in carpool line and I realized that someone had told my GPS to avoid u-turns, highways, toll roads, traffic and ferries, which made the machine quite confused when recalculating directions. To get to those features, click the following:

tools
navigation
avoidances (u-turns, highways, toll roads, traffic, ferries)

Make sure they are all unchecked. This was a good chuckle, and I loved the look on his face when I asked him about it! Go buy one. Or, if you have a GPS, let me know what model in the comments and what you think of it.

And, if you haven't listened to Billy Currington's boy meets girl song and story about Good Directions, take a listen.