ve6dave

I totally agree that a wonderful place to bring people should be the best swag and not the swag in the cache. But, saying that I have young kids that if they know the cache is a micro tighten their seatbelts and lock their doors. For us the swag is the treasure at the end of a hike, it makes enticing the kids out of the vehicle and on a family hike an easier sell. (though most times they will still begrudingly head out for a micro, but that is just to please dad.) Another point is, after heading out on a long trek or a trek where there are few muggles, searching for a "micro in a spruce tree" is just wrong. Micros are great for urban caching where an ammo can doesn't really fit under that lamp skirt . If you have a large choice of hiding places, make use of the best one to hide a regular or large cache the caching community will appreciate it and so will the kids. As to swag, $1 stores usually have some really neat stuff. It isn't necessary to blow a weeks salary to fill a cache, just think, "what would I really like to find in a cache" ix nay on that, gold, money, keys to the Lexus are never going to be found in a cache.

Allanon, thank you!! ve6dave

Hi All, Is there anyway a person from outside the WSGA can gain some information regarding the Spokane event? Links on the cache page on gc.com send you to the WSGA page which says that more information is available in the WSGA forums. After two requests to the register into the forums and two emails request to persons within WSGA, I have yet to recieve a response regarding the event or access to the forums. We are heading down to the Champoeg event and are planning to attend the Spokane event as well, if we can get some information regarding the event. Thank you to anyone who can shed some light on the event. ve6dave

Hi Sarah, When you are staying in Edmonton, and probably staying downtown, there are scores of caches along the river valley that are regulars. Most of the regulars carry the requisite McD toys, just because they tend to end up in the caches. Of course that is what my kids tend to grab too. You can't go wrong by flying with Westjet. The weather in Edmonton is hitting spring thaw right now, 10C yesterday and the snow is melting quickly. So the potential for a wet trek into the bush off the trails may exist. We have a winter friendly cache event happening next week which will add a substantial number of new regular caches into the area. Winter friendly are caches that you don't have to dig too hard through the snow to find. Most often hidden in trees and above ground level. The twist with this year's event is that all the cache hides must use ammo boxes. So you are generally assured that the caches will contain kid swag. I hope that you and your son have a great trip. We have a good group of cachers in the Edmonton and Calgary areas with kid friendly meet and greats. Maybe you will be in the area when one occurs and be able to attend one of them. You would be more than welcome. Dave

I have two caches out in our area that would be "classified" as "seed caches". They are Lil' Mama Cache and CARW2007 - The CARport. Both of these caches have added to, and continue to add to the game in our area and other areas across North America. There currently are approximately 100 caches that are spawns of the two caches. Then again these are small and regular containers, not micros. It's great when you go to a new cache and discover that it is one of the containers that had come from one of your seed caches. It is really interesting to see how different cachers camoflage the containers prior to hiding them. Personally I believe that this style of cache adds to the game otherwise I wouldn't spend the time to devise the cache or go through the continual expense of stocking it. By the way Lil' Mama Cache is 60 litre Rubbermaid container and CARW - The CARport is a 121 litre plastic garbage can, both much larger than a micro.

I am not familar with the Dell pda, but if it is running either the Palm or Windows mobile operating systems then your best and most cost effective solution would be paying $8 for Cachemate. I have used it on my pda to find caches when a FTF opportunity arises and I haven't my garmin with me. It works quite well, but is not as rugged, therefore I take great care while wandering the woods with it. Cachemate is great for insuring that you have all of the nearby caches at you finger tips. The software works equally well with a bluetooth gps or an internal gps. The only thing that you would lack is mapping. Oh well, what do you want for eight bucks.

It works great! I have played with other pieces of software but have always come back to Cachemate. It works well with either an internal GPS or external bluetooth GPS as well. The GPS giving you the distance to cache information and pointer arrow if you are out without your regular GPS. I still prefer to use my GPSMap 60cx for looking, but I always know what I am looking for with the ipaq loaded with the pocket queries and Cachemate.

So were you using iron on T-shirt transfer materials?

I actually have done so successfully. Downloaded the trial of GeoScout added the .net framework and the software worked as advertised. I have since removed it from my pda and have gone back to using Cachemate. Bells and whistles aside, I found that I had more of what I needed at my finger tips with Cachemate. I was running GeoScout and continue to run Cachemate on an Ipaq hw6955 which has an integrated GMS phone and GPS. What I didn't like was the pieced together maps and the interface (unfortunately it was a couple of months ago that I removed it from my PDA so I can't recall the specific interface issues.) What I did find was that it was continually updating from the website which if I didn't have an unlimited data package with my wireless carrier could have made the high prices of gas look cheap when considering going out caching. The software I have for caching on my PDA now is Cachemate (the best $8 investment next to GSAK) GPSproxy (which allows my internal gps to talk to Garmin software) and Garmin Que loaded with City Nav. North America (which allows me to map to any of the caches that I have loaded into it. The one drawback is that the Garmin Que doesn't have the compass arrow screen, so for that feature I once again go to Cachemate.) But when I get to the area of the cache, I use my GPSMap 60cx and the pda is data support.

Around our area we call it "Geocaching 911". I can't say that I haven't phoned Geocaching 911 or that I mind someone phoning me, the truth of the matter is, I would much prefer someone having a good experience when attempting one of my caches. Sometimes that just involves a nudge in the right direction, sometimes it ends up confirming that the cache has been muggled. Interesting enough, at short while back, I just happened to call Geocaching 911 while looking for the access to the area of a cache. The owner of the cache that I was attempting indicated how to get through to the general area, which was fenced off, railway lines etc. if I were heading the direct route. It just so happened that he was about to call me on the Geocaching 911 line as he was attempting one of my newer caches and was encountering a few difficulties. So even though you may be caching alone, with the magic of science, there can be someone there with you (especially on those superlong hikes). Though, sometimes where someone found it months before, may be totally different now. So at best any of the calls to ones "Geocaching Lifeline" is at best a nudge in the right direction. Have fun out there, it's just a game. Even my grandmother used to cheat at Crib, but we had fun playing with her all the same.

I had this problem with my 60CX. Called Garmin they had me send it in and I had a new unit in 3 days.

Edson eh? I was going to plant some caches in Edson. Unfortunately, I ran out of time or it was too late in the evening. I do have my eye on a few places though. I was also planning a winter ski-up-to-it cache at the ski hill not too far to the north of Edson. But alas the hill is closed for the year and the cache will have to wait until next season.

I have basically the same phone the Ipaq hw6955. I have installed on a 2Gb memory card, Cachemate, which will store all of the cache pages with hints etc. as well as it will give you that handy dandy little follow the arrow to the cache feature. I have also installed Garmin GPS10 using it with GPSproxy as a fully functional Garmin Que which offers voice turn by turn navigation with the appropriate Mapsource maps unlocked for it. As well you may be interested in mobile.google.com for a mobile gps enabled version of Google maps and Google Earth.

I have to agree with Red90, Topo Canada is the best bet when starting out. As for the "basemaps", I am assuming that you are refering to which of the maps do you keep loaded on the unit. Myself, I have portions of Topo Canada and City Navigator V8 and on occasion World map. Depending on the model of GPSr you have, it is possible to "layer" the maps ( I use the term layer quite loosely as they are not transparent and are equivilent to laying several paper maps on top of each other, thereby requiring you to move one map in order to view the other map). But if you really, really need to find the nearest Tim Horton's, CN V8 is the software for you.

I don't ever recall a time that I had the unit get overheated so I am not sure that that may be the cause. You are right in the comment about having to hold the button for an extended period of time.

I was wondering if anyone else is having an issue with the power button on their 60cx? The problem that I have encountered is that the button is periodically giving me problems either turning on or off the unit and toggling the backlight. The unit is great and has been working well up to this point, but now I am having problems just turning on and off the unit. I have emailed Garmin Support and I'm awaiting their reply.

Great macro, but when I ran it the code field was filled with smart name. I was looking through the macro, but I couldn't see where this may have been referenced. I probably just missed it.

Is there a chance that another run of the coins will be made? I have just come across the posting now and would still like to purchase some.

I actually just bought a copy of World Map at the beginning of the summer because I was heading to China and needed at least a base map with a few roads and cities on it. From there I found another site that allowed me to input street level maps of Beijing which was extremely helpful. I wouldn't have been able to add the street level map without having the World Map loaded first. For all it's worth.

I also use GSAK to filter found caches (and archive and temporarily disabled caches) out of my not found caches that I load onto the GPS. I also use GSAK to create a .gpx files that I load on the GPS using POI Loader so that I have a listing of all the caches in the area. That is extremely useful when planting a new cache and wondering about proximity to other caches.

We have hidden 38 caches to date, most of the caches we have left $5.00ish coffee cards. The last series of caches that I hid which consisted of 22 physical caches, I hid an additional fully stocked ammo can cache for the first to find the whole series. GCVFYY Buy In or Sucked In... "The Pyramid Scheme" I have also created a spawner cache of small cache containers that had a fully stocked cache as the first to find. Lil' Mama Cache, GCT436. These first to finds insure that more caches get hidden out there.

The symbols work great just two more questions: 1. How can one use these on and with Mapsource? When I used the export to Mapsource from GSAK and I changed the icons as with the GPS send, the icons on Mapsource turned to small black boxes for all of the caches. 2. Is there anyway to apply these symbols to the custom POIs loaded on the GPS through POI Loader? Thanks for the great work on this.

I have an ipaq which has the garmin que software installed. The software gives me great tracking, routing etc., but what I have started to use is Cachemate for pocket PC. In fact I have taken off GPXSonar the unit. It was great software, but the Cachemate allows me to select a cache by distance etc. and then brings up the go to window for me to follow the arrow to the cache. Neat software worth the $8.00. Also you might find that when you down load your waypoints from GSAK that you should change how the unit labels them to %smart from %code. It makes it a lot easier to find the log pages.

I'm heading to China and am looking for any information on downloadable maps for my 60cx. As far as I have seen there are only basemaps available but I am not even sure of that.

To really do it the easy way, download GSAK (Geocaching Swiss Army Knife). Then drop your pocket queries into GSAK and upload to the Etrex.