BAMBOOZLE

If it is within budget, I would think about the 20 or another unit. The Etrex 10 lacks expandable memory. There are better mapping options, including free maps, with at least a 20 - the 10 does not officially support maps other than the limited base. Color display is also nice. I agree for the reasons given....go with the 20, its had high praise from forum contributors.

Cool, that's not too far! I might just go there pretty soon. There is a fake bird house (tricky to get into) just next to the ranger station where you enter...he gets a kick out of watching that one. We gave him a geocoin and other goodies for helping out with the park caches. The main CO in the park is woodnut and he has placed MANY caches in south Alabama....quite a few are one of a kind caches that he makes himself so try not to miss any of his if you're in the area.

Sigh.....nothing we say, do,or post will stem the tide of the numbers craziness nor return caching to the good old days.GS opened the gates to appease what appears to be the majority craving quantity over quality....you do what you have to do to compete with the other games out there....the (I) game has gutted key geocachers from our local group that can't be replaced and is far more damaging than the ( M ) game. We are out of town and I passed a couple of hundred caches, mostly urban ,because we didn't care to look for them....ended up hiking a bit and finding 10, 3 were earth caches. At an event I held a few years ago a very nice couple told me that had already found 11,000 caches in the calendar year....I actually almost said " I'm so sorry " ....then I realized this was supposed to be a good thing. I've only went with a group a hand full of times using multiple cars and each cacher signed his name on the log....only one or two would actually " find " the cache, usually whoever got there first.

So that park has struck a nice balance between cache maintenance and placement. The problem is often not the unattentive Owner as much as the destructive Muggles (or too many very inconsiderate "Geocachers"). I've seen really well-built caches with great Owners, get archived, because the park visitors overwhelm the maintenance by making a mess out of the cache (and the surrounding area) all the time -- sometimes on purpose. Some places can't have a cache, because they have too many vandals. This is why we can't have nice things. This is about GZ of the park I refer to.....what a great place to do REAL geocaching. http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC2QZWV_csp-root-of-all-evil If you're ever in the area give it a shot.

I don't know how large the area in question is or number of caches involved. I have cached in one large state park having over 2 dozen mostly hiking caches with terrains that go the range and the park staff, mostly the head ranger, helps take care of the caches. Many of the caches are built one of a kind and in 12 years and 48 states it could be our favorite caching place. Caches bring cachers to the park and land managers like the traffic and revenue ( they do where I live ) so its a win/win if someone on the staff teams up with the CO who could live many miles away.

I am like you and had nothing but trouble trying to get the whole U.S. on my unit with free maps....big time headache. I recommend buying the City Nav on the card...at least you can swap it to another unit.

I agree here...my 3GS ruined me for phone caching.....horrible experience.

This says it all......I've had crashes on 3-62S units and one 450 and it always boiled down to this.....it happened with old ver GSAK, so far the new is 100%.

True...if it ain't broke don't fix it. I did do one update because there was a new feature I just had to have.

I had a visitor to my office a few years ago and he said the case on his iPhone was waterproof. He dropped it in a 200 gal fish tank that I have and it stayed there while we drank coffee then out it came and no problems. I don't know what it was but it did a good job of keeping the phone dry.

When you get home plug in and go to PLAY/Field NOTES / UPLOAD MY FIELD NOTES /BROWSE......Go to the GARMIN directory in your unit and click on " geocache visits "....once uploaded you can go to the Field Notes page and log your caches. You don't need GSAK to do " Caches Along a Route ". I picked up some Dells ( D630) on Ebay running XP and they are great for all the geocaching stuff ( everything else too )....titanium frame unit made for heavy field use, you can use your iPhone for a hot spot and use it anywhere. With GSAK loaded on one you don't need internet as you can have tons of caches ready to move to your GPS.

Depends... if it is placed without the previous owner consent, yes it is a throwdown. If it is placed with the previous owner consent (even wrongly presuming that the original had disappeared) it is OK. True. There have been a few times I replaced a missing cache of mine only to have the original found a good distance from GZ by a future seeker so you can kind of " throw down " on your own cache.

I also use GSAK to download my PQ's and organize my caches. As a premium member on your Pocket Query page you will see Find Caches Along a Route at the top. We use this to create caches along our vacation routes and have traveled the 48 states extensively ....it works great and you can set it like you want ( search distance on both sides of your route )

Someone contacted me who runs summer camps and they want to incorporate geocaching into their activities. I suggested for starters they put out " non official " caches as waypoints for the kids to find. IPhone use was discussed and while I have found caches ( very few ) with the GS app and Geosphere I couldn't figure how to place a waypoint with either. In general, I am very slowly coming up to speed on my iPhone

Thanks for the iPhone link.....I see it.

From Geosphere you can add related waypoints from the cache page, and you can add new waypoints or caches from the offline list page. Use the button on the top right of the offline list with the arrow from the box and choose add cache or waypoint button. I used that In preparing for an upcoming trip to add waypoints of places we will want to visit that do not have caches. It makes it easy to get an overview for the day and to use one of the navigation apps (such as here or Navigon) that I linked to each page. It's been a long time since I used the Groundspeak app. I know you can add waypoints that are linked to particular caches but I don't think you can add separate waypoints. I could be wrong though.. . . It has been a long time. Yes, I did it on Geosphere....thanks also for the additional tips.

Can you manually enter co-ords to create a waypoint in the paid GS phone app and if so how do you do it ? Same question re Geosphere ?

I think its the charger....I own every one MAHA makes and they are all great chargers. Get them below or on Amazon. http://www.thomasdistributing.com/Maha-Chargers_c_1205.html

Here is one of your throwdowns. "Fix" lasted two months. You wasted your effort. http://coord.info/GC2GH2T How many throwdowns have been done on that cache? A found it log from a 100K+ find cacher: ... Enjoyed the hunt. Left a temporary replacement and SL. Thanks! I was heading south during some of the worst rain and flooding in Texas history. Check out my log on photos on this cache : http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC1PN9J_wichita-river

I don't want to waste time and money on someone else's cache, when that person should be doing the maintenance/replacement themselves. If I want to put out containers, I'll put out new caches that I'll maintain myself. It's called "the responsibility of being a cache owner." I edited out the lazy and inconsiderate part because I don't think you are that. The rest of your statement is " dead on " and speaks for most here if they would admit it.....nothing wrong with that AT ALL. I just think its a good thing if some chose to help out and they shouldn't be disparaged any more than the ones who chose not to.

Here is one of your throwdowns. "Fix" lasted two months. You wasted your effort. http://coord.info/GC2GH2T It would appear that current finders are finding the one I left.....regardless , I consider all efforts worthwhile.

You know just once , in relation to this topic, I wish someone would post, " I really don't want the hassle of carrying around extra cache containers and logs nor do I care to spend the time and money to create them just so the next cacher will have something nice to find ". There may be lazy CO's but there are also lazy cachers who would rather just say the heck with the next guy I don't want to be bothered so I'll just log a NM and move on......however they will do tons of research on when a CO last visited the site, the CO's mothers maiden name, etc, etc when in a fraction of the time they could have fixed the cache. I'm in the minority so go ahead and pile on just ask yourself is it your purist view of the hobby that generates your views ( if so its really overkill ) or is it that really you just don't want to be bothered.

No system would be perfect but this works for me.....lets do it.

Fairly common problem usually caused by a corrupt GPX file....remove the card if you have one in and delete all GPX files then restart.

That's why its important to print out and keep safe documents that are important.