geode hunter

Count me in. I use osx, MacGpsPro, Cachemate, maccmconvert, Pathaways on a palm, and several garmins. Thanks in advance.

There is the philosophy that dictates to be like other people do what they do. Just did a search on Norway. Pizza cost $50.00 ? gas is $6.00 a gallon? Taxes........? Hmmmmmmmm! Personally I like the 18July05 format.

1 out of 1168 finds so far . not too bad really, just memorable. Surgical gloves are now a part of our gear as well. especially for the city caches.

Not a very good way to develop repeat customers. now if they let you log the cache every time you visited ............

Great job. guess I'll be upgrading to tiger a little sooner than planned. What else do you have up your sleeve? Thanks for the widget

Way too many key strokes. probably asks you if you really want to do this. On a mac it's just [option zero]. N90º00.000 W000º00.000 Thanks for making me look for it. Now I can throw away that asterisk.

Thanks for the ideas. Gotten quite a few since last posting and appreciate all the help. Looks like we are going to have fun with it.

it may look, to the casual reader, we have gotten off topic. The original question was for Groundspeak, but it seems Cachemate will do what I was asking for, Running pocket queries to gather info on several caches, converting them to Cachemate database, then running a nearest search with quantity, direction, and distance filters, I can download just the needed waypoints to my gps and have the paperless info on them as well. This will be very useful when traveling long distances from my current 500 point radius of home. It will take many pocket queries, but it will save time at the computer and leave more time out in the field. The pictures will be nice to do the puzzle caches. ie: corrds are here, then look for this picture, go there, look for this pic..... ect. as soon as Jeremy Atherton tweaks MacCmConvert abit. Thanks again for all the useful advice and help .

I don't know how it happened, but we were selected to design a night hike for the Indiana Geo fall Picnic. GCPP4QJ The hike will not be permanent and will have to be set up quickly just before dark and removed by the park's closing time around 11:00 pm. I have a .5 mile loop trail right behind the picnic's shelter house in mind. What would make a good night hike for an event? Should they be scary? We kinda like searching for night wildlife while camping, but that seems lame for an event cache. Looking for ideas here, any help will be appreciated.

Thanks for the insight. Fortunately, all the PMs of our state park system are (or seem to be) more agreeable with our sport and we don't want them to have to start choosing sides in this debate. Not much can be achieved through this forum's thread, but it has been helpful to vent frustrations to like minded cachers. Then occasionally someone comes up with an idea that seems to have eluded us and off we go in that direction. My impression of the advisory board meeting was, this rule will keep being modified until the whole community is satisfied with the results. We watched them modify deer hunting regulations for urban deer hunts because the desired result was not achieved. We do have to let them know our feelings on what those results should be. I believe there is even a clause in the rule to allow grievances to be heard and decided upon. Maybe Mountain Climber can chime in here somewhere and get the ball rolling in that direction.

Yes they are taking a hard line with the policy at CSP, and according to the Asst Director of State Parks many of them were in areas that the manager was not going to allow under the new policy. This policy is similar to the policys in many other states. The clean sweep in MHO was a way to start fresh and to begin following the policy, especially when few if any came forth to get a permit. If he did look up each email for the caches, and sent an email, how many responded? There is a situation in Illinois where a geocacher has been contacted about his caches in 2 State Parks, that do not have permits. He has been notified of the policy and was requested to contact the Park for the permits. As far as I know he has not done so. Should the park remove the caches or ignore them? This is not responsible geocaching! If geocaching is to be repected and allowed in public areas, we as geocachers must follow the area rules, talk with the PM's and place geocaching on a level above other type of activities that are looked upon as undesireable. Remember the use of our public lands is not a right, but a privilege. Let us not lose that privilege. I think a thorough reading of this thread will reveal many steps were followed to gain the respect of the pm and the "voting with our dollars" action was all that was left for us. I believe, unless we take this right back to the IDNR advisory board where it started, the pm will continue to keep HIS park all to himself. Another insight into this pm's way of thinking is his calculation of the amount of caches that could ever be allowed. The rule states 1 cache per 200 acres of the parks total acreage. He takes his acreage and subtracts the new nature preserve and other off limit areas to come up with a total of 5 caches max. CSP is now Indiana's 2nd or third largest state park. I'm guessing he hopes we will give up and wrote me once saying how upset he was I was going over his head, by writing the board. I have been waiting to see how Jon E Cache's contacts were coming along and on my year aniversary of our permit application, may start all over again.

Nope still don't work.

I have talk to support and it seems my geocaching name is too long to enter the forums. so I created a new account with the abbreviated name. In the beginning it was enough that my profile page let me enter under another name, but this stopped working last year. I have not retried it since talking to support. Plucker sounds like a good idea , I'll look into it.

As a premium member, the loc (isn't that an amway product) files are never used. The programs I use, if they don't need the extra info strip it away and use what they need . As a matter of fact the only program I use that needs the gpx files is cachemate. It sure is handy to have the description, the past logs, and the hint out in the field. Only wish it could deal with the pictures. the shot gun effect of the pocket queries works just fine. Just thinking of finer ways. Thanks again

Well, is was just a thought. I can download each individual page as a .gpx then open them up into cachemate for paperless caching. and, with my new found plugins, upload coords to my gps. Maybe this is better anyway. I can keep finding the next nearest cache , say west, and created a highway route of caches. Thanks for looking into it.

I believe my last count was somewhere around 45,, 46 ? They were all well placed and no one area was over run. The park , especially with the introduction of the new 2700 acres, could hold more. There were easy caches, puzzle caches, clever caches, strenuous caches. A little something for every one and very few had done them all. Different stroke you know. I really don't think the reduction in the amount of caches is the issue or the limit on two caches per person. I even think the one year limit is fine. it would give us a chance to hunt and log more each year. The problem is how this park manager chose to handle it. My favorite word here is inquisition. i don't have a count of how many cachers are in Indiana and Kentucky. The GC.com site says there are over 21000 registered users. The stats page I watch, says there are 6700 cachers with over 200 finds. There are 100 each in IN and KY with over 200 finds. I would think these active users would eventually find themselves in the parks. Then add the visitors and power cachers who are visiting. Then all the new cachers looking for familiar places to hunt their first cache. That's a lot of lost revenue. Too bad.

maybe as a part of pocket query to custimize even further the waypoints need to complete a file? The site allows for gpx downloads on individual pages, "Download individual listings to GPX You have the ability to click on a link to download a cache page directly to GPX format. GPX files contain all the information on the cache page which can be read by applications that support this file format." Why not the search pages?

Before Rule #47 everyone was playing by geocaching.com rules after rule#46 we tried their rules. Apparently not every park manager took the route that Larry has and there are caches in other parks. Larry has made his point and there are no approved caches in HIS park. (I am still unclear about tentative approval). It feels about like Turtle's picnic rule. with one exception. The rule would have been passed while you were picnicking, then told to get a permit. and oh yeah we are not going to issue a permit until all the picnickers are gone. so get out. then comes the staff to help you get out. Larry will run HIS park the way he sees fit and that is his job, For any real change the process needs to be taken back to where it started, at the DNR advisory board. It is my understanding that this is the intention. see how it goes and modify when needed. I'm glad Larry is touting his park we too live minutes away, but ultimately he will do it his way and the pr program this weekend is just that. We will spend our time and money in one one the other State Parks. I'll continue to check on the cache, but since no logs to date, don't think there will be much restocking to do.

i imagine this has been thought of before, but a quick search through the forums has not revealed it. How about allowing a .gpx download , in addition to the .loc one on the 20 caches each nearest search generates? Also it would be great if the checked marked boxes on the search pages could accumulate to one download from the several pages. This might even help in finding caches along a quick highway route.

if it wasn't mean, why did they remove our other cache on the trail that had the same approval as our other one? Not even a call or email to say it was bothering them. ( phone numbers, emails, and addresses are all included on the permit form. Thieves?? or concerned parties, who were enjoying their park and only too happy to help out.?? Good bye.

We applied for our permits early, as soon as the permit form became available. After a montyh or so, two were given tentative approval. and one of those was ripped out of its hiding spot during the inquisition. (guess it was too close to the trail. Within arms reach while standing on the trail.) Here it is June and the one remaining cache does not have final approval and since there seems to be a boycott on the park., no one has logged a find on it since March. There have been several cachers who have offered assistance. We, Deermark, and Arf have offered to monitor new caches and some of the old ones we tried to keep. During our application proccess, we even offered our help in the development of the new area. Trail building or whatever they needed. There has been at least one CITO event, where several cachers were trying to give back to the park. They apparently no longer want our help.

Found a cache, hidden in the rafters at a shelter house in Paoli indiana, that someone thought it would be funny to "fill up" and rehide. It was cold and at first not apparrent, so after emptying the fluid and drying out the log, . Yes it did strike me funny as to how it got wet up in the rafters, but who would have thought.

Ok. dumb question time. The pocket query will let you enter a number as high as 999 in the blanks for number of waypoint and miles of distance, but then defaults to the max of 500. Is the programming there for the 1000 - 1 waypoint download and there are other underlying reason why this can't be done now or ever? Surely there is an answer that will make sense. Even if it is no, I just don't want to..

Are they really Geocaches if they are not in the Geocaching.com system?

Despite how individuals use the info in their caching adventure, most gpsr's will hold 1000 waypoints and yes muliple PQ's will get the info needed to fill them up. On a practicle side, it takes three PQs to do the filling. There are overlaps and the system is busy finding the info on the duplicates. The program I use (MacGPSPro) will delete the dupicates. The ability to run a single PQ on a 1000 would seem to save money. But then I don't know exactly how this bandwidth thing works. Either way the current system is workable, just trying to make suggestions.