IMHO some of your criteria are a bit higher than necessary for your stated use.
As a data point, I've got an old Garmin III+ and it is very useful for hiking because it was designed to be waterproof and rugged. It meets many of your criteria, such as support for an external antenna, computer-interface, base map, backlight, etc. Even at only 1.4 MB RAM memory it does fine. You can probably get a used one for a song. The 12-channel-parallel electronics are very good, although newer equipment can get sub-20-foot accuracy with the newer WAAS technology.
A step up is the still-old Garmin GPS V, which adds street-based routing, more memory, and a higher-resolution screen.
Or you can spring for the newest Garmin Quest, my object of GPS lust^H^H^H^Hdesire, which is tiny, has a color screen, and over 100 MB RAM.
One benefit of the older GPS III+ and V units is they use AA batteries while the Quest uses a nonremovable rechargable battery.
The Garmin site has a nifty utility to compare their units feature-for-feature:
http://www.garmin.com/outdoor/compare.jspSteve
P.S. It should be obvious I'm partial to Garmin.
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