intrepid_camper wrote on Mar 17^th, 2012 at 9:16pm:

Yes, Jimbo, you should JUST GET a Spot.  I pay for the tracking feature in my yearly fees.  Then I can use it to follow my exact bushwack route on Google maps, where my campsites were, etc. and print it out when I get home to add to my journal.  I sometimes will use it to determine how long it took me to cover a certain distance...the posts back home to the computer also register the time of day and date.  Since I do not carry a watch it is sometimes interesting to see how early or late I got out of camp or made camp each day.  You  could use it to mark where you saw that moose, or bear, or even the location of your best lucky fishing holes.  :D

Okay, okay... I reached my "tipping point" on this issue over the campfire in my neighbor's driveway last night.  I agreed to take his 15 year-old son on as my "paddling partner" for my mid-July loop from Bottle through to McIntyre, Burt, Brent, Wicksteed, & McAree.  Something about the mother's heightened anxieties got to me.  The father, an attorney, never blinked an eye.  [Apparently a co-worker of his lurks around QJ & is an avid reader of the BWJ and - despite knowing something about me - told the father his son would likely survive the experience with or without a SPOT2.]

Anyway, as soon as I walked back into the house, I made the purchase using one of those DD "Best Buy" deals.  That way, when my sciatica kicks in while I'm climbing some cliff and over-I-go, at least the search party will be able to follow our "tracks" to our last known location (the SPOT2, you see, will likely be in my pocket as I plunge into the abyss and the kid might not be able to fetch it from my new location at the bottom of the adjacent lake).

So, I caved & bought the danged thing.  Somehow, when it was just people worrying about ME, it just didn't matter... I KNOW I'm going to come out OK (definition includes: even if I DON'T come out, Quetico is a nice final resting place so it all "comes out OK"...  if you catch my drift).  On the other hand, to have valued neighbors worrying about their son on his very first wilderness adventure with their kooky neighbor for twelve whole days??  The peace of mind & good will the SPOT2 will buy me with them makes the SPOT2 a good choice at ANY price.

C'est la vie, mes amis....

Jacques-bo   8-)