TomTom!

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With the holiday season heading into full swing, a lot of people do a lot of traveling, and usually we're among them.  This year, we're staying home, but that doesn't stop me from telling about my new favorite gadget - my TomTom.



This fall, we went to Pennsylvania. First time trip for both Mad Natter and for me, and getting there? I think my printed directions must have been set up to avoid all towns with a population of more than fifty, because we took back roads from the Mooselandia border right down to the last two hours of an eight-plus hour trip. It was gorgeous, but honestly, my phone battery is lucky to take me on an eight hour road trip (my car charger / lighter has been broken since we got the car), and fiddling around was not something we could afford to do with low battery life.

Anyway, on the way back home, because the directions were so abysmally complicated, we stopped at a BestBuy and picked up a TomTom GO 50 S.  This was, I kid you not, the best money we could have possibly spent.  Once we added on an external battery pack, we were set. We managed to get home in an hour less time than it took us to get there, and we were able to swing by Niagara Falls on our way, so Mad Natter could see the Falls lit up at night.

The TomTom is probably not as sleek or impressive as the Garmin, or the other Big Name GPS Systems, but it has US and Canada maps, is pretty easy on battery life, and is very easy to use.  I am, overall, very pleased with it, even if it does mean a steady stream of Mad Natter wanting to use it, because he wants to play with the unit (which reminds me, perhaps I'll get our almost-as-old-as-Mad-Natter GPS out of storage for our next trip!) and watch the maps. Still worth it. Especially for those days when you're just a little out of it, and manage to make a wrong turn out of the gas station and get hopelessly lost... about fifty feet from the highway.  TomTom. Worth the money in sanity saving potential.