JohnCNA

I used my Garmin 64s and a Nuvi 65 LM for caching for quite a long time. I would build routes and waypoints in Basecamp to augment the PQ of geocaches and export the resulting GPX file to the Nuvi and copy the GPX file to the 64s. I also copied the GPX file to Dropbox. Both I and my wife have geocaching apps on our phones that will import GPX files from Dropbox. So we had some significant redundancy while on geocaching road trips. We could use the Nuvi or our phones to navigate; both on road and off road.

This quoted article is 8 years old. Yes, 8. Phone technology is light years ahead of that now.

There are a number of fitness apps for your phone that have hiking activities and will let you record your track during your hike. You might actually have a fitness app that came with your phone that will do this. You can start it up when you park your car and then leave that running in the background while you use the geocaching app when you are in unfamiliar territory like the woods. Then when it's time to return to your car, just bring up the fitness app and follow your track on the screen back to your car.

This Plinko Cache works as you described. I don't remember how the quarter made the electrical contact at the bottom, but you could contact the CO and he would probably give you some tips on his construction.

I have a 64s and 64st. They are both the same way; often failing on step 3. I think it's fussy about the speed it is rotated. I usually get it after 5 or 6 tries, varying the speed each time. Try going faster and slower.

I had the SD card fall out once in the field while changing batteries. Hard to find in the leaves on the forest floor. After that, I secured it with a small square of electrical tape.

One way to link older (but not the really old) GPS units with an Android phone is with an OTG cable to connect the phone and GPS. Some of the things you could do with that while you are in the field are: * Depending on the phone app, you could pan & zoom the phone screen map to an area of interest and have it save a GPX file of all the caches on the screen directly to your Garmin. * You can go to the web site and create/download a PQ and copy it to the Garmin. * You can download OSM/TOPO maps and copy to the Garmin. * You could send or receive a GPX file to or from a friend. This is not the most efficient way to do things of course but it can allow using a "non-internet-connected" Garmin in a more 'spur of the moment' fashion when needed. There isn't going to be any live interaction between the phone and GPS but you can at least go online with your phone, acquire information and save it to the Garmin.

POI Loader does not let you select an individual GPX file. You navigate it to the folder that contains the GPX file(s) and POI Loader will import all the GPX files in that folder. If you have multiple GPX files in that folder, each file will show up on the Garmin as a separate POI file. Since there is a DriveSmart macro for GSAK, by all means use that. I will save a few steps.

So do what we did. Road Trip! This issue applies to all active cachers. Eventually, you find yourself going farther and farther from home to pursue the hobby. Calling it a penalty is not realistic.

Oops - yes, I meant Bearing. Although Heading and Bearing are two of the data fields I have on my Garmin map screen.

To Course is not the same thing as Heading. To Course has no real usefullness in geocaching. Heading is always pointing to the cache and is what you should be paying attention to.

Locus Pro and GCDroid both handle offline caching quite well. Well enough that I haven't used my Garmin in over a year. My favorite is Locus Pro.

Course and Heading are two very different things. You don't have any real use for Course when geocaching. If both units are calibrated correctly and have the same settings for map datum and true north, they should both show approximately the same Heading when you select GoTo.

I can highly recommend the 'tick spoon' for removing ticks. I have tried other tools for both me and my dog and the spoon has been the easiest and most reliable. Tick spoon

I too have ruined some things with Deet. Including fogging my eyeglasses. I like the Picaridin in lotion format. And it seems to offer longer protection.

I use Locus myself and love it. I can also recommend GCDroid as a good geocaching app.

Spraying Permethrin on skin doesn't harm anything (or you). It just breaks down very quickly and loses its effectiveness when in contact with our skin oils and perspiration. Repellents made for skin like Deet and Picaridin go on the skin and Permethrin goes on the clothes and fabrics.

I have found a tick or two in the car, myself. Now my preparations include not only spraying my clothes with Permethrin, I spray the carpets and dog blanket in the car as well.

I had the same thought at first that not being able to carry spare AA's would be a limitation with multi-day hikes. Then it occurred to me that my recharge brick is just about the same size and weight as a pack of 4 AA spares. And it would recharge the GPS as well as my phone 4+ times. I would expect the lithium battery to last longer in the first place and if it has a modern charging circuit it would charge quickly. With my phone and its fast charging circuitry, I can connect it to my brick and go from 40% to 100% in 30-40 minutes or so. And I can continue using the phone while it's recharging. Getting rid of my AA's and their charger would not bother me at all.

I like to use the automotive anology in answer to the "you don't need" responses. I learned to drive when manual transmission and manual steering were the norm, and I did just fine. I don't "need" those features. Would I buy a car today without auto trans, power steering and air conditioning? Absolutely not. ?

You can use the search function to search for a city. Enter Atlanta GA and look at the map. Your downloaded caches should show on the map.

I (mostly) followed the instructions. I've been using downloaded GPX and csv files for years from poifactory.com as well as creating my own for use with a Nuvi on road trips. Setting a 10,000 ft notification for Rest Areas and 500 ft for red light cameras, for example. First time using poiloader with the GPSMAP 64st, though. I did not bother with a custom icon, I just created the csv. Set a distance of 1000 feet and drove around in the car. I got notifications, but not for ALL of them. Presumably because quite a few overlapped. Where there were clusters where several were within 528 feet of each other, I'd get the notification for the first, but not the others. At any rate, notifications worked (mostly) as expected on the GPSMAP 64st. I do know that poiloader is very fussy about filenames as well as poi names within the file. This allows it to automatically assign distances or speeds when you have multiple csv/gpx poi files in the folder to upload at once. There are quite a few examples in the poiloader help file. I can only think of 2 suggestions... Eliminate the custom icon to see if that is causing a problem somehow. Check the "creating a custom poi file" section in the poiloader help section to see if you are accidentally triggering an auto function in poiloader. Oh, one more thing. I'm using a different version of poiloader than what is shown in the instructions. My version does not have the option of setting the POI output filename. It always creates poi.gpi on the device. I have no idea if that is significant or not.

I have manually set proximities on waypoints and received a tone when entering the proximity circle. It was not possible to do that with geocaches, so I placed a waypoint at the same location as the cache and set the proximity on the waypoint. I have also used Basecamp to select a bunch of waypoints and set proximity on all at once. When the exported GPX was copied to the 64st, the circles and alerts were working. I just thought setting one or more test waypoints manually on the device might clarify the native capability of the device and eliminate the possibility of a GSAK setting.

Have you tried manually editing a waypoint on the 66 and setting the proximity that way? When I do so on my 64st and my friend's 62s, it shows an orange circle around the waypoint when viewing the map. I would expect the 66 to do likewise. I noticed that your map screenshot does not have that. I'm not suggesting you do that with all your waypoints but it might reveal something in your testing.

Look at the app 'TBScan' (Apple & Android). Lets you log a bunch at a time. Also uses character recognition and your phone camera to scan the codes with your phone. Pretty handy!