July 27, 2009, 2:56 pm
If a GPS unit talks in the woods, will anybody hear it?
Not my family, apparently. On a recent hike down to Dark Hollow Falls in Shenandoah National Park, I poked haplessly at the gadget slung around my neck, trying to watch a video on the small screen, while my mother and my boyfriend loped along ahead of my father and me on the trail. My father, meanwhile, was half-listening to the chipper female voice coming from the device, but mostly he was checking out the scenery, not the screen.
My family and I were at the park for our annual Father's Day getaway, and I roped them into trying out GPS Rangers, which the park introduced last summer. Each paperback-size Global Positioning System device, created by a company named BarZ Adventures, contains recorded tours of four popular hikes: to the top of Hawksbill Mountain, down a hill to Dark Hollow Falls, along a one-mile portion of the Appalachian Trail, and on a ramble through Big Meadows.
They were all hikes I'd been on before, most of them with the park's human rangers, whose frankness, humor, and expertise make guided hikes the highlight of every trip.
So I'll admit it: I was biased when I rented my first GPS Ranger at the Harry F. Byrd Sr. Visitor Center, across from Big Meadows. Could these gadgets truly replace or match the experience of a ranger walk?
