Sue Gremlin

Do you have coordinates to that one?

This cache is at the site of a conflict between an F-105 thunderchief and a firetower. Neither won that battle. All that's left is the landing gear and I am told other odd bits of airplane around the area, but we did not see any. Worth a piney visit.

We find ours indispensable. Well, indespensable enough to spend $700 or so to replace it. It will allow you to route off the beaten path, and has gotten us to many a cache parking spot that we would otherwise have had to guess at. We have done some caches without it, but not too many. BTW, for those of you who might misunderstand, it's not suitable at all for caching on its own, you will still need a handheld unit for the actual cache hunt. We did use our SPIII a couple of times when we were desperate and our Magellan Explorist was in the hospital, but it wasn't all that great. Our new unit has no battery backup, (and no power source outside the car pluggy thing), so it's not an option.

I think I would have died laughing if that happened to our SPIII. Ours did turn off inexplicably once or twice, but she never did the Stepford Wife thing.

This cache is located right outside a drive through safari park, so you can see the giraffes and other big game critters, and is excellent. This cache is located right outside the gates of the Cape May County zoo. Neither of these are actually in the zoo.

You named your GPS? We do refer to ours as "her" because we chose the female voice with the English accent. We also try not to make her angry by going off route too much. She never seems to get angry, but we are waiting for the day when she tells us she's sick of us disobeying her and that we can just find our own d*mn way.

Aw, he's gorgeous! And he looks so happy with his new people.

Anything they tell you to call them.

I'm sorry but that's like the cutest thing ever.

I sort of like "Waggle" for someone walking by. or "Giggle" for someone hunting for frogs near the cache site. Okay, I'll stop. Ow! Stop it! Ow! Okay okay! I'll stop now!

Yaknow, it really wasn't bad loading the software, it took, what? 30 minutes? to load Maine to Florida, all the way out ot Indiana. We got it by Fedex on Saturday at 10:30 and were ready to leave by 11:15. It is everything you said it is, the recalculating function is amazing. We laughed about our old unit taking forever to recalculate, and then proclaiming "EXIT LEFT!" riiiight after we've gone past the exit. It's so easy. And it is compatible with the new map software we bought just before the SPIII was stolen. (I think you get two licenses per disk). It's all good. And it only cost approximately seventy bajillion dollars. I am never letting this thing out of my sight, ever.

Joe gets uncomfortable, but I don't usually. I don't exactly want to alert people to the fact that we are looking for something, but I never feel guilty about it. It's my experience that if you act normal and pretend you belong there and you know what you are doing, nobody will pay any attention to you.

Ikim & Noj, I want to thank you for your help. Your comments have helped us a great deal, and we have decided to go with the Garmin SP2610. Joe found a refurbished one and a 2gig card online for a reasonable price, and we expect it to arrive by Fedex today. It's so hard to function without it when you are used to having that guidance. It will be so nice to have a GPS in the car again. Yay.

We each have a PDA, but I don't think that would do it for us. The size, ease of use, processor speed, plus the visibility/screen size just don't compare to a SP.

Thanks very much for the recommendation! Regarding the Quest 2, can you enter your own waypoints into these without having to interface with a PC? Also, we are concerned about the size of this thing, as we liked the large screen on the Street Pilot, it was easy to see. It seems really small.

Thanks for the information, sorry you lost your Street Pilot, too. But what about entering waypoints manually out in the field? Can you do that with your new unit? We are not finding a lot of information on that function. We do both agree with you about the processor speed of the SPIII. It was slow, but we really liked the thing. We use it every freakin day, and really miss it. I am afraid I am not following you on your reasons to avoid the 2620. Doesn't it come fully loaded with the maps, no interface necessary? Is that a drawback?

This is interesting. We just read a manual and thought it said you COULD enter and edit waypoints with the Magellan Roadmate. Did we misunderstand? Our Garmin Street Pilot III allowed us to mark and edit waypoints easily. This unit was stolen last week and we are looking to replace it, and this is our issue with choosing a new one. None of the user manuals discuss this function, interestingly enough.

I will be interested to hear the answer to that, too. Does the TomTom have a battery backup?

*crickets* *crickets* *crickets* I am glad that nobody is answering, that means there is not a lot of experience on the forum with people having their dashboard GPS units stolen. In case anyone needs to know, Garmin says that they will flag the unit as stolen with a police report faxed to them, and they were able to get the serial number for us from their files. If someone tries to load new software onto the unit, it will cause Garmin to capture their information and notify us. Unfortunately, 1) The person who tries to load map software will likely be an innocent bystander 2) If the person using it stays in the area that is loaded on it now, they won't need to load new maps. That's possible, some people never leave home! Anyway, we will probably never see it again, but we think it will be covered by our homeowner's policy. Let this be a lesson to you: Don't leave your GPS in the car.

Our Explorist 300 inexplicably shuts down occasionally, but I haven't noticed what display mode it's in when that happens. Sounds like a glitch. Might be worth calling them and asking them about it. We haven't because it's not really an issue for us, but it would be interesting to know what they say about it.

Oh, and another, related question: Since we will be in the market for a new GPS, I wanted to get your recommendations for one. We use our dash mounted Street Pilot all the time, for everything. We do use it while driving between caches, yes, but also for just about everything else. We are lost without it. We will replace it, but the Street Pilot III has been discontinued, and we are looking at newer models, there are some with touch screens, for instance. We can find used Street Pilot III's, but we're not sure if it would be smarter to just get a new one. Our big concern is that we will be able to enter waypoints directly. This is not listed on most of the specs we are finding online, since it's not something that's commonly used. But it's essential to the health of our caching habit! We loved the Street Pilot because of that and for several other reasons such as the large and easy to read display. Anyone have any recommendations for a dash mounted GPS for us?

Some lowlife broke into my car last night as it sat in our driveway and stole our Garmin Street Pilot III (as well as my new Sirius Radio). Happy New Year to us. Anyway. This model requires a separate software CD that has the map information on it. It only holds so much information, so if you have to load a map from a different location, you need to dump off what you have on the chip. You can buy this software, but you must enter your information and the serial number of the unit before you can use it. We plan to call Garmin about this when they're open on Monday, but we are wondering if this information is kept anywhere, and therefore, the unit would be trackable. Anyone had any experience with a stolen GPS that would care to share?

Two words: Pine Barrens. Nuff said.

Assable? I don't know what that means, exactly, but I think it's a good word.

We live in an area full of amazing cachers and amazing hides. We are so luckeee! If I had to pick one hider as a favorite, it would have to be Luvs2Yak. His hides are always fun and in memorable and beautiful places, and he takes the time to make them really interesting and often uses great, fun camouflage. And, if I may continue to gush, his coorinates are always absolutely riiiight on the money. We oughta have a caucus with him about how he gets such accurate numbers for his hides, I am sure he takes a great deal of time doing it. So Luvs2Yak, this bud's for you! Thanks for the fun caches.