JohnCNA

I don't believe it limits the caches displayed by distance. I have caches in my etrex 30 that are .1 mile away and others are 150 miles away. It lists them in order of distance, and may limit the total number of caches displayed. So if a person had a few hundred caches downloaded, it might only list the closest 100. I don't know if there is a number of caches displayed limit or not, but our Nuvi's only show the 50 closest waypoints, so it's not inconceivable that Garmin might put a similar limit in the handhelds. Since the OP said he downloaded 4 caches, I'm assuming that he only has a total of 4 in there. What sounds more likely to me is that he might have accidently marked two of them as Found. I assume the 10 is a very similar OS to the 30. The etrex 30 only displays 'not found' caches. If the OP had mistakenly marked any of the caches as Found, they will no longer display in the cache list. With the cache list displayed, we can change the filtering by selecting the menu button and selecting "Show Found". Then it will show only the found caches. Once they are marked as found, there is no easy way to "un-find" them. I did this by accident in BaseCamp and could not find a way to put a cache back to 'not found' status that I had marked by accident. I would advise the OP to check for "Show Found" caches on his etrex as well as to check his Waypoints list. He may be looking for waypoints, and they are listed in a different area.

I find the versatility of having two devices a great thing. Dedicated GPSr for it's accuracy and a smartphone for online search and higher readability of descriptions, hints and logs. And the ease of logging or entering field notes in the field. Can't beat the ability to call up a Google satellite view on the phone when the GPS points me across a marsh or creek. I almost never just 'head out and wander' when I plan on geocaching. Planning ahead includes not only taking some caching supplies and tools, it involves searching the area online first for caches, parking, etc. Then a PQ or manually sending a group of GPX files to both the GPSr and the phone, and off we go. But yes, if the phone app picks up a new cache while I'm in the field that I want to go after, I'll try the phone GPS to get me close. If I have trouble finding it, I'll plug the coords into the Garmin and narrow the search. Now if there was a way to send from the phone to the Garmin via Bluetooth or something, that would be awesome!

Because he's in the field and searching for new/other caches around his current location.

If your 'route' is really hiking trails and not along roads, you can build a 'path' in Google Earth that is completely manual and does not 'snap' to roads like an auto GPS or the web site will. Export your path to KML and you can upload that to the GC web site as your route. I have successfully used this a few times to limit my PQ along a route to follow a particular hiking path, not roads. I limited the search to +/- .1mi to limit being distracted by the occasional nearby urban hides.

After you enter your log, GC displays it. In the upper right corner is a pencil if you need to edit it again, and a photo icon that will let you upload photos attached to your log entyry. If you need to add a photo to an existing log, select Edit Log to get to the same options.

I've searched the help areas and compared GC listings to no avail. When I look at the map of caches in an area, some of the icons are round and most are rectangular. They both have the 'traditional' cache icon. What is the difference between round and rectangular?

I have the etrex 30, I'm sure the OS is the same. For one at a time, go to the GeoCache icon on the etrex home screen. This would take you to the list of not-yet-found caches. Click the menu button and select Show Found. This will be all your found caches. Open one, select Menu and Delete. There might also be an option to Delete All if you hit the menu button while the Show Found list is displayed. Personally, I prefer to do all this from within Garmin's BaseCamp software but on occasion I delete directly from the device.

Total agreement on that one!

That looks more like a LPC cache to me. LPC caches aren't that far off from dumpster caches, IMHO. I like the logic of "would you want to live here" but I would suggest tweaking that to, "Would you visit here if there was NOT a cache at this location?". I don't want to live in the woods, at the edge of an overlook or just off a hiking trail. But I sure like to visit all of those things and we do so. My favorite caches are the ones that lead me to a park, an overlook, a monument or some other cool sight that I would have never stumbled across on my own.

I've been following this etiquette thread with interest and now realize I may have sinned. Or did I? A week or so ago I found a micro tube cache (log only) that had a cracked tube and the log was getting wet. We took a snack and water break and air dried his log for a little while. I just happened to have the exact same tube in my pack so I transferred his log to the new tube. Logged it as Found and replace it. I mentioned what I did in the log. So I didn't log something I didn't find and I didn't do a throw down or take over his cache. I thought I was being helpful. Did I trangress? Should I have tried to contact him first?

I just noticed the CacheSense 'Quick Log' feature a few days. As a CO it scared me. It just posts TFTC, which has come to be known as another way of saying...."Your cache was not worth writing about". If you edit a TFTC log later, to say how much you enjoyed the cache, the CO does not get notified. It does as a default but you can edit that right on the blackberry if you are not to lazy to do so. We logged 3 caches on the 30th all of which had more that TFTC, not that I am a huge writer but I try to put something. When I got home I only had to go in to edit them not to change any text but rather to visit our personal TB to it. Kudos. That's really good of you to make that extra effort. It would be nice if CacheSense could change that somehow to let finders know that COs prefer more then just a TFTC. If I was a newbie I might think that that was the preferred comment. I think I'll go over to the CacheSense forums and make that suggestion. The Field Notes option is pretty slick. You can enter your brief details and have it upload to your Field note section on GC and then touch them up and embellish on the computer later and click to log them. This is what I do. You can choose to just have it post directly to the log instead. The Quick Log function you're referring to has a text entry box that's populated with 'TFTC' when you open it. The truly lazy can just select Quick Log and click OK. Or they can click in the text box and type a full log if they want to. Searching is nice, too. As mentioned, it shows your online PQ's. Or you can search for nearest caches around your current GPS location, manually entered coordinates, nearest to the selected cache, nearest to a saved location or just retrieve by GC code. Just this past weekend I was sitting at the car dealer waiting for my car to be serviced. Got bored with Saturday morning TV and opened CacheSense. Said there was a cache 300 feet away. Borrowed a pen and walked out and snagged it. Sweet. I use the multiple database option a lot. Lets me define a database for a specific outing or trail and I populate it via PQ, individual downloads, and/or importing a GPX file from Garmin's BaseCamp. Beats scrolling through a really large list of stuff that I'm not looking for today. At the beginning of a trail hike/geocache, I sort the list by location. Same options as in the search functions, GPS, manual coords, selected cache, etc. If I sort by location using my current GPS location, all the caches on the trail will be listed in order of distance from me. And I just walk from one to the next. Looking across a wetland with the GPS pointing that way to the cache, select Google Map and it brings up a satellite view of where the cache is. Ah, so THAT's the way around this! Nice. I use a Garmin etrex 30 with GLONASS and WAAS/EGNOS and 24k shaded Topo Maps. Cell phone won't beat that for position accuracy, and the etrex battery lasts for days. My Curve gives credible accuracy but the feature list just gets started where the Garmin leaves off and makes it possible to be completely paper-free. I don't leave home without both of them charged and loaded. Lots of good stuff here. Free 30 day trial; well worth the ten-spot to own it.

I always bring my dog, for the same reason. When I get those glances of 'what's that guy doing in the bushes off the trail?" I pretend to be checking my dog for thorns in the foot, ticks on the leg, etc. I immediately go from a suspicious looking old guy to a harmless sweetheart who dotes on his doggie. And for the most part, I ignore caches in parking lots, lamp poles and the like. We focus on trails and parks where we can actually see something interesting along the way. This hobby has exposed me to DOZENS of little and not so little parks all within a 5 mile radius of my house that I did not know existed until a geocache sent me there.

Yeah, it was humorous! Even more funny, the cache container was from a seed cache and I identified who I got it from in the description. It was the same guy whose cache got denied. So he got shut out by one of his own containers.

Because of the short delay between placing a cache and when it gets published, I had a cache conflict. Two of us placed a cache too close together at almost the same time. Mine was placed first so the other guy had to remove his. How often does this sort of thing happen?

Is it really necessary to calibrate the compass on the eTrex 30 every day? Seems like I have to. Calibrated yesterday and today almost everywhere I point it, it says SW. Calibrate again, and it seems to be working fine again.

Well, I bought it and I'm glad. The detail is much nicer, and the routable roads and POIs are a nice plus. Thanks all who responded.

I have a new Etrex 30 which I am learning how to use. I download a couple topo maps from GPSFileDepot and some local geocaches from here. I like the shaded topo maps I see in the Garmin ads. For those who have a Garmin that supports shaded topo displays and have bought the Garmin topo maps.... Was it worth the $100?