imajeep

There is also the option of caches along a hike. We're hiking from Topanga Canyon out to Parker Mesa in So. Cal. this week, and we discovered five GCs along the route. If you are a premium member, you can plug the route of a hike into 'Caches Along a Route' and get a pocket query with the results.

Garmin has an upgrade on their web site that resolved Vista compatability problems for me.

I'm in. Please allow me to nominate the Aux Plaines Crossings series in Lake County, Illinois (GCXE77). A must-do cache for Chicagoland. (my log)

Since you referred to Mapsource, I'll assume you have topo maps, not street maps. A route includes only the waypoints themselves (essentially coordinates) and a list that shows the waypoint sequence. All the GPS will show you is the bearing and distance to the next waypoint. The basemap has very little detail on it. All you will really see is a nearly blank map with your current location and a line projecting off on the bearing to your next waypoint. If you want something to do street navigation on a trip across the country (as opposed to a cross-country trip ), I don't think you are going to be happy with the 60, unless you get the Garmin street map set. Even then, it sounds like loading maps will be a problem.

Relax, and welcome to the game. I'm nearly as green as you are! But it's a lot of fun, and the community is very open. you've come to the right place. These are the first forums I've hung out in--in twenty years!

It's a lot easier to do in MapSource on your PC. you get a bigger screen to work with, you can plot a route between waypoints on the hike, and as I'm sure you know, you can download the waypoints and route to your GPSr when you are done.

"Could be worse--could be raining!" --Igor ("That's eye-gor!"), Young Frankenstein Could be worse--thieves took my car! A brand new Jeep Grand Cherokee, three weeks after I moved to Chicago! It turned up on a boat headed for Poland.

To prevent caches from showing up, add them to your 'ignore' list. You should see an 'Ignore this cache' link on each cache description page. I sprang for a premium membership to get pocket queries and caches along a route. Both can be useful, even if your GPSr doesn't connect to your computer: Pocket queries can be loaded into software (like GSAK) to create a portable database on a laptop. You can take that out in the field to select caches you want to do. Caches along a route are incredibly useful, even if without a cable hookup. If I'm driving from Chicago to St. Louis, I can get a list of all caches along I-55 between the two cities. I can open the results in Google Earth and see which ones are near rest stops or right next to an easy exit, and so on. And you know you'll give in and buy that nice, shiny, new Magellan, or Garmin, or whatever, sooner or later. and when you do, you have a built in excuse: "But honey, I couldn't let the money I spent on my Geocaching.com membership go to waste, could I?"

Test #3

Test posting #2

Testing, 1, 2, 3. Is this thing on?

FWIW, I thought about doing this, but I got concerned about wear and tear on the 60Csx memory card holder. It's a holder, not a slot. You have to remove the batteries, slide back a somewhat flimsy metal cover, and then simply lift the card out of a tray. It seems a lot less durable than the card slots on my camera and laptop. So, I decided to stick with the cable.

Uh-oh--somebody's been drinking the Kool-Aid again! A close buddy of mine is a devout Mac user, and he used to recite the 'no viruses' mantra. Then he got a job as a manager of a network of a couple of hundred Macs. Within a week, he had changed his mantra to "We are all vulnerable! You Windoze users just have bigger backsides to fire at!"

The eTrex 'H' units have a new high-sensitivity receiver that has better reception in the woods and canyons (including urban canyons like Chicago, where I live). Rumor has it they're as good as the Garmin 60 Cx models, which are legendary for their ability to pull in a signal under challenging conditions. If you cache in wooded areas or in urban areas with tall buildings, I'd recommend an eTrex 'H' model, or a 60 Cx model.

A multi-cache is two or more hides in one cache listing. We've hunted a couple of different types. The first is a micro/ammo box multi. A micro is hidden somewhere--it is simply a tag with the coordinates of an ammo-box in nearby woods. When it's done well, going to the micro takes you somewhere the hider wanted you to see, which is explained when you get to the ammo box. The second type we've hunted is a puzzle cache, the type you describe. The hider sends you to one or more locations, which are sometimes referred to as virtual caches in the description. At each location, you pick up a piece of information that helps you figure out the coordinates of the actual cache. The last one of these that we hunted took us to the oldest buildings in the village we live in, where we picked up numbers to plug into the final coordinates. The final coordinates sent us to a park bench in a busy park in the center of the village, to find a heavily camaflouged micro without being discovered by the muggles all around us. It was great fun! I'd guess that in your case, 'A' and 'B' are pieces left out of the coordinates. Whatever 'L' and 'D' are (and you may have to figure this out as well, but they should be at the location you are sent to), you take the specified number from each and replace 'A' and 'B' in the final coordinates. Have fun!

With a name like 'Veeneman', how could I mind the Dutch language? Honorable ancestors were from Apeldoorn!

A fake rock--the kind you hide keys in. Now that may not sound impressive, but it was a really good fake rock, and it was placed in a crevice in a larger stone that matched its color and shape perfectly. The placer was definitely the Antichrist!

I know this subject has been done to death, and I can hear it now: "Oh geez, Cache Ratings - Another Proposal!" But hear me out! Though I be but a lowly newbie, I've got something I'd like to put out for discussion. I did a cache series today, Aux Plaines Crossings (GCXE77). It was so good, I am bowled over! I really wish there was some way to recognize the exceptional nature of caches like this. So, in the spirit of Jonathan Swift, allow me to put forth a modest proposal. Why not allow finders to vote for exceptional caches? A finder gets one vote for every hundred caches found, first vote available after the first 100 finds. When a cache collects a specified number of votes, it gets an 'Exceptional Cache' award, and users can search on the 'Exceptional Cache' attribute. Details? I'm too new to the game to know what they would be. But there are lots of people on this forum with the necessary experience. So, I'll just shut my mouth and yield the floor, just as soon as I adjust my kevlar underwear...

Several times, I have arrived at a site where the direct line to the cache involves a half-mile bushwhack through the bramble. Or I can go north (or east, or whatever) a short distance to get to a trail that will get me within twenty yards. I find a compass make that easier. Plus I use my GPS for hiking. Compass feature is a definite plus there.

For the benefit of anyone researching this thread later, here are some of the top-rated day hikes with 3-6 mi. and moderate difficulty, from Trails.com: --Mount Washburn --Avalanche Peak --Fairy Falls and Imperial Geyser --Mystic Falls We can't decide which ones to do, so we'll probably do 'em all!

Garmin MapSource can open GPX files and download data to Garmin handhelds, but the only data that gets transferred is waypoints, routes, and tracks. About the only additional info that gets transferred with a cache are its name and ID.

Congratulations and best wishes to you both! You had me going...

How are you entering the route--into the handheld, or into the MapSource PC software? If you want to enter a remote route, use MapSource. Create waypoints for your route, including the start and destination points, then use the Route tool to connect the waypoints.

Nanos are the smallest possible micro-caches. Generally smaller than your fingernail, and devilishly difficult to find.

We don't take a travel bug unless we know in advance what its mission is. And then we won't take it if we can't advance it on the mission. When we first started caching (gee, it must be almost a month ago ) my wife and I grabbed a "Unite for Diabetes" travel bug. Its mission was to go to North Carolina. We grabbed it because my wife is diabetic and thought the "Unite for Diabetes" promotion was very cool. We dropped it in a cache a few miles closer to its goal, but then someone grabbed it from there and took it up to Wisconsin! They hadn't bothered to read its mission before grabbing it. We ask permission before doing anything dramatic to a bug. We picked one up here in Chicago this week that we plan to drop in California next week. Before grabbing the bug, we emailed the owner to make sure they had no objection to us holding the coin for a week, then moving it to California. They were very gracious and encouraged us to go for it! At some point, when we're a bit less new at the game, we plan to plant a few bugs ourselves. When we do, we plan to attach a small tag with the bug's goal to the bug itself.