If you want to be able to navigate the streets, Im not sure that the Legend is BEST. But it is the cheapest. 8MB wont get you THAT far on there. Not much of a city can be loaded on such. The screen is small on it too. But its only $182 according to their site. As far as the software being $50, no. I believe software is well over $100 and easily into the $200 range also....yeah, their site has North America for $116. But that software is nice...
If you have a laptop though, dont invest too much into GPS software. You can connect your GPS to your laptop, and with Microsoft Streets and Trips, it does the same thing. And from what I am told, its much more detailed. Apparently it can tell you all the way down to what side of the street youre on. From Personal expirience, the software for Magellan isnt great. Not sure on the Garmin. I used a Magellan, nice GPS with slightly larger, color screen, and it was rather off. The coordinates for the streets really werent great. I know it cant be perfect, but when it says you are in the middle of a backyard between two streets, it could be better. But once you get on highways, freeways, or more or less, out of multy street towns, it gets much more accurate.
Perhaps you can invest in the Recreational Lakes program for Garmins. I have no idea what its usefulness is for you and conoeing, but its worth looking into.
I am sure jtice will chime in soon, as he knows quite a bit about a GPS's. He got me into it really. It and geocaching...thanks jtice /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif
I have seen and used a top model Magellan for cars only. Had a ten gig HDD in it. That thing was incredible. Touch screen, accurate like crazy, smart as hell, fast at predicting a path, bright screen, talks to you...twas nice. Wish I had the $1000 for that. I want a new D-SLR camera more right now though....got to save for that and stop getting my mind on GPSs from threads like this. lol.
Anyhow, I am going canoeing this weekend as well. I will bring along a my cheep etrex with me(no mapping on it /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif ) and do some caching I suspect. If you do get a GPS, try geocaching some time, its really fun. Once you get a GPS, its 100% free entertainment.
Cameron