If you’re looking for a summer activity that blends exercise and exploration while emphasizing teamwork and technology, it’s hard to go wrong with geocaching. If you’re familiar with geocaching, you know that there are more than a million caches hidden around the world, and there’s no price to participate. Once you have a Garmin GPS handheld and have downloaded cache locations from My.Garmin.com, you’re ready for your high-tech treasure hunt. If you haven’t gone geocaching before, we’ve made it easy to get started at Garmin.com/geocaching.

On Saturday, July 3, geocachers from all around will gather in Carnation, Washington at Remlinger Farms for GeoWoodstock VIII. And Garmin will be there with some coveted coins. We made a big splash earlier this month when we announced the GPSMAP 62 series, perfect for geocaching, hiking and hunting. We followed up that big announcement with news of a limited-edition geocoin. To show our support of GeoWoodstock, we’re sending a coffer of coins with my good friend Orville, who will be handing them out at the Garmin booth while supplies last. The only catch? You need to tell Orville our secret catchphrase: “I’m going paperless with Garmin.” This doesn’t mean you’re filing your taxes online or eliminating bank statements from your life. It means that you’re ready to enjoy the ease and efficiency of paperless geocaching, where the hints, terrain, description, map and recent attempts are displayed on the screen of your Garmin handheld – all the while eliminating pages of printouts for each cache. So watch the video below, check out our next-generation Garmin handhelds and find Orville at the Garmin booth and tell him Jake sent you. But most important, tell him “I’m going paperless with Garmin.”

Whenever we talk about our Garmin tutorial videos, everyone here mentions that we’re lucky to have “cheap talent” … meaning me. Then they point out that even that description is a bit of an exaggeration. Both the “cheap” (it’s actually “free”) and the “talent” parts. Fortunately, I know how to surround myself with good people. From the writers (Peg and Carl know how to knock out some scripts) to the video team (Beau and Owen do amazing work while having far too much fun) to the folks using the products while I ramble on in the background. The vast majority of the time, these actors are none other than our Garmin colleagues from engineering, product support, industrial design, human resources, the warehouse or sales. Yet another huge benefit to vertical integration and all of us being housed under one roof. And more times than not, they’re good friends of mine, willing to spend early mornings, late nights and long weekends hiking, running or cycling on camera … all for some pizza, laughs and assurances that I owe them a favor.

But the real star of the show is always the product itself. From our first tutorial series with the revolutionary Forerunner 405 and then the feature-packed Edge 705 and simplified Forerunner 110, our lean team of fitness engineers never ceases to amaze me. And not to be outdone, the outdoor recreation group keeps topping themselves with products such as the Oregon and Dakota families that are tough as nails, yet easy to learn. So I was excited last week to head out into the woods with the video team and my buddy Josh, an aviation engineer,  to showcase our newest outdoor handheld, the GPSMAP 62st. Under thick tree cover and along dramatic hillsides, we filmed a handful of tutorials with topics ranging from a general overview to specific features such as paperless geocaching, wireless data transfer and the vast variety of mapping capabilities. We’ll be adding them to our online learning center, where you can find helpful videos for these devices and more, including aviation and marine products. And you can always follow us on Twitter and check out our GarminBlog YouTube channel to see our ads, unboxing videos and other behind-the-scenes fun featuring the best “cheap talent” that pizza can buy. 

One of our best just got better, just in time for summer adventures. Garmin today announced the GPSMAP 62 series of rugged outdoor
handheld devices, bringing a sleek updated look, new mapping options and
many technical innovations to a product line beloved by hunters, hikers
and geocachers of all
ages.

“The GPSMAP 60 series has been one of our most popular product lines,
and the new GPSMAP 62 series improves the form and functionality to make
a best-in-class device even better,” said Dan Bartel, Garmin’s vice
president of worldwide sales. “Whether you’ve been using Garmin for
years or are buying your first handheld, GPSMAP 62 is ideal as it
combines our new breakthroughs in outdoor recreation technology with the
comfortable feel of an old favorite.”

To help each user maximize the mapping potential of Garmin handhelds,
each model in the GPSMAP 62 series is compatible with Garmin’s
subscription-based BirdsEye Satellite
Imagery, the free online community at Garmin Connect as
well as Garmin’s

free Custom Maps utility for transferring paper or digital maps
onto a compatible handheld.

Boasting a 2.6” sunlight-readable color display, up to 20 hours of
battery life and a high-sensitivity GPS receiver and quad helix antenna
for unparalleled reception, the GPSMAP 62 series features three distinct
waterproof models to suit various activities and interests. The basic
GPSMAP 62 includes a built-in worldwide basemap with shaded relief. The
GPSMAP 62s adds a 3-axis tilt-compensated electronic compass and
wireless connectivity for sharing routes, tracks, waypoints and
geocaches between other compatible Garmin handhelds. GPSMAP 62s also
includes a barometric altimeter that tracks changes in pressure to
pinpoint your precise altitude. Users can also plot barometric pressure
over time, which can help keep an eye on changing weather conditions. In
addition to these key features, GPSMAP 62st includes preloaded 100K
topographic maps for the entire United States (or preloaded 50K
topographic mapping of Canada for the Canadian version). Coverage on
GPSMAP 62st includes major trails, urban and rural roads, interstates,
highways, coastlines, rivers and lakes as well as national, state and
local parks, forests and wilderness areas. In addition, you can search
for points of interest by name or proximity to your location and view
descriptive details for terrain contours, topo elevations, summits and
geographical points.

Geocachers can
help the environment and be more efficient by going paperless with the
GPSMAP 62 series, quickly downloading cache information directly to the
device. Each model stores and displays key information such as location,
terrain, difficulty, hints and description, so that you don’t have to
tote printouts with you. Learn more about geocaching, getting started
and going paperless at www.garmin.com/geocaching.

Subscribers to BirdsEye Satellite
Imagery can use BaseCamp software to quickly transfer
high-resolution satellite images to any Garmin GPSMAP 62 device and
seamlessly integrate those images into the handheld’s maps to get a true
representation of the surroundings. More details can be found at www.garmin.com/birdseyesatimagery.

Customizing maps for your Garmin outdoor handheld has never been easier.
Through a few simple steps, Garmin’s
Custom Maps can bring the details, labels and landmarks of your
existing paper or electronic map to a product in the GPSMAP 62 series,
or a compatible Garmin Oregon, Dakota or Colorado. Compatible with both
PC and Mac, this free utility complements the myriad of mapping products
already offered for Garmin devices, including City Navigator, NT for
turn-by-turn directions on city streets, Blue Chart g2, for marine
charting, and TOPO U.S. 24K and 100K map software for incredible terrain
detail (each sold separately). To walk through the steps, to find and
share maps and to join discussions about Garmin Custom Maps, visit www.garmin.com/CustomMaps.

Experiences will live on long after the activity has ended, thanks to Garmin
Connect (http://garminconnect.com), the
free-to-join online community of more than 20 million activities for
sharing, storing, analyzing and enjoying at garminconnect.com.
Outdoor and fitness enthusiasts alike can share activities on Facebook
and Twitter, export to Google Earth or relive the activity in table
view, calendar view or on a variety of maps including our new embedded
Google Earth view.

Each device in the GPSMAP 62 series has a high-sensitivity GPS receiver
with HotFix, which automatically calculates and stores critical
satellite information and can use that information to quickly calculate a
position. The GPSMAP 62 series is made even more versatile through its
universal mounting system that is compatible with the same accessories
as Garmin’s Oregon, Dakota and Colorado products. Other key upgrades
include photo navigation and onboard memory for downloading maps. GPSMAP
62 and GPSMAP 62st models also feature high-speed USB for faster map
transfers with your computer, as well as a 3-axis tilt-compensated
electronic compass, which shows the user’s heading even when standing
still, without the need to hold it level. In addition to the preloaded
topographic details for the entire United States, GPSMAP 62st features
500 MB of available built-in memory. GPSMAP 62 and GPSMAP 62s are ready
to be customized to fit any user’s activity, thanks to 1.7 GB of onboard
memory.