Distraction

Vagabond...I want to know your exact coordinates RIGHT NOW so I can navigate my way to you and KISS YOU! You are a life saver! Today is my birthday. And it has sucked so far. I wanted to take my son geocaching with my new toy, and I was getting SO FRUSTRATED because of the difficulty of using this thing. I didn't see any 200 cache limit anywhere in the documentation, but it must have been dropping them in some way that was invisible. I filtered my GSAK file down to 198, used the Geocache Manager again and THERE THEY ARE! Vagabond, your answer was perfect, and because it was SO FAST, you saved my birthday! Well, excuse me, I'm going to go geocaching with my son now. Thank you so much! Matt (Distraction)

OK. I love and hate my Magellan Explorist XL. It's really cool and does tons of stuff my old Garmin GPS 72 couldn't. It's also a pain in the posterior. I finally figured out how to upload DirectRoute. So then I used GSAK to create a .gpx file from a pocket query, which Magellan's Geocache Manager can open. I see the waypoints listed on the screen and save it to my GPS. But then, only SOME of the waypoints actually make it into the unit. I've figured out all the stupid directory structure navigation and gotten to the file, and there are a bunch of geocaches from that file I created, but not all of them. Any ideas?

Can you do any kind of searching or filtering within the GPS unit itself? ie: search only for nearest, or for difficulty of 2.5 or less, etc?

I want a GPSr that can do the following: Upload detailed Marine Charts for when I'm on my boat. Give turn-by-turn directions when driving. Use for Geocaching. I'm looking at either the Garmin 76C or the Explorist XL. I currently use a Garmin 72 and am familiar with how to navigate and the features, etc., and have no problems with it. I just want to add the chart and map functionality. Magellan's charting is a little more friendly...Garmin likes to slice its charts up into tiny slices and charge for each...Magellans aren't quite as split up. I know that any of them can be 'used for geocaching', but Magellan claims a special interface specifically for handling geocache waypoints. What I want to know is if the Explorist XL stores descriptions, hints, etc., or just the waypoint ID. It would be great to get rid of my PDA and just have one device that stores everything. Thanks!

I'd like to 'bump' this topic back to the top, because I have the same question. I'm trying to do some route-planning, where I know the addresses, and want to be able to do plot them all out and figure out the best route, or better yet, have software do it for me. But I don't know of a way to convert the addresses to GPS without doing it one at a time. Since this topic was so old...I figured maybe by now someone knows of something new out there. The other question is, do I really need GPS, or is there map software that can do it right off of the street address...and does that software allow mass upload, say, from a spreadsheet. Thanks! Matt

I've been looking for something like this and figured others might be, too. I don't have any map software on my PC at home (or at work), so this is the first time I could do something like this. It's free to sign up. You can upload a .loc file, and it plots it on Google Maps with all of its functionality like pan, zoom, and satellite overlays. Pretty cool. Matt

Sweet! Thanks!

Great program...totally love it! I have a cheap old Palm running CacheMate. No maps on either my GPS (Garmin 72) or on my Palm. I know I can add user notes manually to my GSAK caches with the nearest cross-streets - no problem. What I really want to do is then export those into Cachemate...preferablly in the Log section. In looking at the Export to Cachemate options, the only place to add smart tags is for the name. As powerful a program as this is, there's probably an easy way to do this that I'm overlooking. Thanks! Matt

This program is awesome! I was tired of schlepping around a 3-ring binder with all the printed pages in alphabetical order by cache id! $30 for a Palm IIIe and $8 for Cachemate and I'm in HEAVEN!! You rock! One quick question: Is there a way to import notes from GSAK into Cachemate? Here's what I want to do: Since I have such an old (cheap) Palm, I can't run any of that fancy-shmancy mapping software, like Mapopolis. And my GPS (Garmin 72) doesn't do maps either. I was thinking of just using the map from geocaching.com to find the nearest cross streets, put them into notes in GSAK, then have them imported into Cachemate. Is that something I can do? If not via notes from GSAK, is there another way to append descriptive data to a cache? Thanks! And thanks for such an awesome program at a price that I could justify to my wife! Matt

Can the Palm IIIe (with 4 Mb) run Mapopolis? I've looked at all the websites and forum posts I could and can't figure it out. My IIIe arrives today, and I plan to load CacheMate right away. But it would be nice to be able to load a map program that can at least tell me what street a waypoint is near. If Mapopolis won't work on such an old PDA, is there a streetmap software that will and will help me find the street near a waypoint? Thanks! Matt

I'm a new cacher, but I'll throw my $.02 in. To me, all caches are exciting. Some are better than others. The ones that take me to a new park, or a cool view or some historic landmark are better than the one under the lamppost behind Walmart. BUT...I also like to go out for a 'cache-and-dash' at lunchtime...which means no mile+ hikes in the woods. A quick, urban micro is just fine in those occasions. Micros are hard for me still. It's very easy for me to find an ammo can...out of the 10 or so I've found they all had sticks piled on them in a way that made it easy for me to find. So I see the challenge in both sizes. My 2-yr old likes to go 'treasure-hunting' (as we call it), and does like the toys in the regular caches...even if it's just a rubber lizard. But if it's a micro, he still likes to hold it and open it for me. It's just time together playing. As for camo...the most clever camo jobs have been for micros. I found one wired to the back of a pine cone in a pine forest, laying on a flat part of a branch with a nook in it. Awesome. Another was an outdoor electrical plug outlet box with magnets on the back, stuck to a big light pole just above another outlet box. It just looked like there were two boxes on the pole. OK...maybe not a MICRO...maybe that's small, but still... Bottom line: there's a proper place for all sizes in this game. This is something we've known for YEARS!!!!....it's the QUALITY, not the SIZE that matters.

I just bought a two-pack of Hide-A-Keys at Dollar General (where everything costs $1). So, 50 cents for each, and they come with a built in magnet. Not sure how water resistant they are, but it looks like they seal pretty well. And they're big enough that a ziploc bag to protect the log isn't out of the question anyway.

I want to hide a cache. A regular size, not a micro. It seems that all the parks around here are saturated with caches. I'm looking for ideas for wooded places that are public that I can hide a cache. One idea I had was at the end of a road that used to be a through road but got cut off due to a highway going through. It's private...there's a turn around at the end and woods around it. But when I checked it out, there weren't any good hiding spots...besides there was fence not too far from the road and No Trespassing signs beyond that. Any creative ideas on where to hide non-micros besides in parks?

Well, I'm glad this thread was here. I was in a park today looking for a good place to hide a cache when I came across one that wasn't in my GPS. TNLNSL. Came back to log it as a find when I noticed it was a multi-cache with the second stage being a virtual cache 8 miles away. I logged it as a find, but after reading this thread went back and changed it to a 'Note' type instead of a find. I didn't even notice the next-stage coordinates in the cache. Oh well. I have to go back to that park anyway to find another cache there...while I'm back I'll go get the virtual coords and complete it the right way...THEN log it as a find. Guess it was a noob mistake, but thanks to this thread I corrected it. Thanks! Matt

I want to hide a cache. A regular size, not a micro. It seems that all the parks around here are saturated with caches. I'm looking for ideas for wooded places that are public that I can hide a cache. One idea I had was at the end of a road that used to be a through road but got cut off due to a highway going through. It's private...there's a turn around at the end and woods around it. But when I checked it out, there weren't any good hiding spots...besides there was fence not too far from the road and No Trespassing signs beyond that. Any creative ideas on where to hide non-micros besides in parks?

My $.02. If you're REALLY on a tight budget, AND you want to be environmentally friendly, just wash up some jars when you're done with them. Like the plastic ones that Peanut Butter comes in. It would just end up in a landfill, or going to the recycling plant. Wash it out. They're waterproof. But a trip to the Dollar General or whatever the dollar store is near you can yield some great stuff. I found some really great tupperware there for a buck, in all kinds of sizes. And a two-pack of magnetic hide-a-keys were only a buck as well!

Howdy gang! I'm new to geocaching, and TOTALLY HOOKED! I just learned about the website last week and a day hasn't gone by since that I haven't been out looking for caches! I already had a GPS 72 from my boat. I've searched both these forums and Garmin.com, and the web in general for the answer and I couldn't find specifics. I ordered the data cable to interface with my PC...it should arrive any day. I want to be able to select a bunch of waypoints from geocaching.com and upload them to my unit. When I read the instructions for my Garmin, it says that I have to pick a format for the in-bound interface, and none of the ones listed are .loc or .gpx. It's like NMEA (I think), or Garmin-specific format. Do the free software packages that geocaching.com lists somehow convert the .gpx or .loc files into the right format for GPS 72 to read? As a separate question, I noticed that Excel will open the .loc file. Can I somehow import to the Garmin unit directly from Excel without the need for separate software? Thanks! Matt