Wintertime

Yes, my friend Larry owns that cache! By all means, give it a go if you get to Disneyland. It only requires you to find five specific benchmarks at DCA. My friend Lloyd spoke to Disney's official archivist about that object a few years ago; you can read that information here: Types of Disney Survey Markers Scroll down to "Unidentified Markers." Patty

The website says, "The book explains why geocaching is illegal in national parks, and why benchmark hunting is such a wonderful substitute." That's a very misleading sentence. There are plenty of geocaches in YNP and the other national parks. True, none of them are traditionals, but there are grandfathered virtuals, and more importantly, Earthcaches. It would be a pity if people were discouraged from enjoying geocaching when they visit NPS properties simply because there aren't any physical caches. Patty

I guess it's about time I chimed in here. Larry and Lloyd and I have all been busy or we would have spotted this earlier. SE, I have a website devoted to Disney survey marks: Patty's Disneymarks site There you'll find coordinates for and photos of all the publicly known benchmarks at Disney's properties in California and Florida. (I've heard there are some in other countries but have never received any confirmation of them.) Each description includes a link to the appropriate Waymarking.com page where you can log the ones you found. If by some chance you found a mark that is not mentioned on my website, please please send me information about it! Since you're specifically interested in the WDW marks, you may also enjoy reading this article about the history of surveying at WDW that I wrote a few years ago: Mapping the World By the way everyone, Lloyd found a bunch of markers at the new Cars Land at Disney California Adventure, plus a few more previously unknown ones at DCA and DL. He and Larry have been sending me information (coords, pix) and I hope to have everything posted soon, possibly by this weekend. If anyone here goes to DCA, please keep an eye out for any other other new ones since the major renovation of the park. Patty

Scott, did you recently upgrade the Garmin Communicator plug-in? There's a known problem with v4.01 communicating with Macs. Get the beta version of the upgrade from Garmin's website, or search around for v3 and go back to that. Patty

You have to delete them the same way you added them--via your computer. You can either drag them off the eTrex while it's mounted on your computer's desktop, or use a program such as Basecamp to manage what is and isn't on the device.

For what it's worth, I found the compass on the geocaching dashboard so small as to be virtually useless, so I removed it and now use the main compass screen when I want to zero in on a cache.

Will a 60CSx show up as a USB device on the desktop? If so, then "sleepysnails" could just draft the GPX files over to the GPSr, no program required. Patty

What circumstances require that? I've never had to do that on my eTrex 20 when loading new .gpx files. Patty

To clarify for "roadwanderer," there are thousands and thousands of survey marker discs in the NGS database that are not NGS discs. And I know of some NGS discs that aren't in the database. I imagine the latter situation is rare, but it does happen. So it's important to remember that the NGS database is neither an exclusive nor a comprehensive listing of USCGS/NGS disks.

Recently my eTrex 20 has started hanging when I connect it to my computer. It gets to "Saving all waypoints, routes and trip log information in GPX format. 100% complete," then never goes to the USB connection verification screen. I've discovered that disconnecting the USB cable and then putting it back in does the trick. (The eTrex gets upset while the cable is out; it beeps plaintively. ) Given that I can quickly get around the problem, it isn't a major issue. But it shouldn't be doing this. I'm running firmware v2.70. Anyone else seeing this (mis)behavior? Patty

Hope this isn't considered too commercial, but I don't work for REI, so it won't help me. :-) I just discovered that REI is discounting the eTrex 30 to $219.99, which is $60 off their regular price (and $80 below retail). So if you've been wobbling between the 20 and the 30, this might tip you towards the 30. eTrex 30 at REI I assume this price will only be good until the anniversary sale ends on May 28th, but I don't know for sure. p.s. I see they also have a Garmin GPSMAP 62s bundle on sale: 62s bundle

Sussamb, is it really possible to go back to square one by removing the GPX file containing the caches? Isn't the "found cache" information stored the geocache_logs.xml file, or maybe geocache_visits.txt? Patty

This morning I was listening to one of the larger radio stations in San Francisco when they ran a spot encouraging people to visit Redding, which is a few hundred miles north of us along the main interstate to Oregon. Imagine my surprise when the list of activities to enjoy in Redding included geocaching! I just found this page on the Redding tourism website: http://www.visitredding.com/geocashing.php Yeah, they spelled it wrong a few places on that page and also on the Outdoor Adventure page that it's linked from. Maybe I'll drop them a note. But it's still good publicity for geocaching! BTW, the idea of Bay Area folks visiting Redding used to be a joke; it was just a place where you stopped to refuel the car and maybe get some lunch on your way to somewhere more interesting, such as Lassen Volcanic National Park or the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. But with the creation of the Turtle Bay Exploration Park and the beautiful Sundial Bridge, and I think maybe a rising arts community, Redding is now becoming a destination in its own right. So, kudos to the Redding Convention and Visitors Bureau for promoting geocaching in their city! Patty

Thomas, I just use the drag-and-drop method myself, but I'm sure I've read postings from folks using BaseCamp for Mac successfully. If you don't get any tips here on fixing that problem, try the BaseCamp for Mac forum on Garmin's website. Patty

KDQ, yes, do learn about Pocket Queries; they're very useful. You'll probably also want to track down the problem with Communicator so that you can use Send to My GPS when you want. Since PQs run overnight, you may find yourself in a situation where you're about to go out caching and you want to quickly add a few caches from another area to your Garmin. In that case, you could always download the .gpx files to your computer and drag them over to your GPSr, but if the plug-in is working, you can just use Send to My GPS. So it would be handy to get that working, too.

Have you confirmed on Garmin's website that your Garmin Communicator plug-in is working? There have been problems with v4.x of the plug-in when running on some (all?) versions of Mac OS. Garmin has a beta version that's supposed to work, or you can punt back to v3.x.

Elicid8or, the newest Garmin GPS receivers don't have a "remove files" function on the unit. As Cacheoholic said, you remove them via your computer. I.e, drag them to the trash while the eTrex is mounted on your computer's desktop.

Also, Dave, you might check with your local geocaching group, if there is one. Here in the Bay Area, some folks have digitized a lot of local trail maps and made them available for downloading.

Thanks for the information, everyone! I guess "drag to Trash" and "Cmd-Delete" (or delete within an app) are the Mac OS GUI versions of "del" and "rm," respectively, in UNIX. Anyway, good to know that people who use BaseCamp don't have to take any extra steps to erase GPX files from their Garmins. Patty

Both Super! That's good to know.

There have been a number of threads here from folks who are just getting accustomed to the newer Garmin GPS receivers that connect to computers as external hard drives. One issue that has come up repeatedly is that on Macs, simply dragging geocaches (or other files) from the GPSr to the Trash does not truly erase them from the unit; you have to empty the Trash. (Perhaps even while the GPSr is connected? I'll have to test that.) So if someone has a lot of GPX files on the device they may think they've freed up disk space when they actually haven't, thus eventually leading to an inability to add new files. Those of you who use BaseCamp for Mac to put files onto and remove files from your GPSr, does it do a true erase of removed files, or do you still have to empty the Trash in order for the removal to "take"? I'd like to know how it behaves so I can provide better advice to other Mac owners in the future. Patty

I just found a posting from Garmin in their own forums that indicates they have a version 4.0.1.1 beta available that's supposed to fix this connectivity problem, so you might try that instead of rolling back to v3: https://forums.garmin.com/showpost.php?p=122541&postcount=4

Dave, are your revised coordinates maintained when the GPX file for that cache is part of a Pocket Query, or only when you download that one cache from its own page? Patty

Annie, you can also delete caches just by connecting the eTrex to your computer so it shows up on your desktop, then throwing them away from the device. But as Sussamb says, if you use BaseCamp, it might be easier to know which files to throw away, because on the device, you'll just see their GC codes, which you'd then have to look up to know the name of the cache.

Lablovers, when you removed the files from the GPSr, did you also empty the Trash on your Mac desktop? If not, those files may not have truly been deleted, just removed from your view.