EdrickV

I would also log a Needs Maintenance if you didn't already. That lets future seekers know that there is something wrong with the cache. If their pocket queries are up to date.

If you had a premium membership and the 3rd party program GSAK (which isn't free) you could download the cache GPX file, put it into GSAK, and add additional waypoints or (for single stage Mystery caches) corrected coordinates and could see where they are on a map. To some extent you could probably do the same thing with GSAK as a basic member using LOC files, but you would not have a lot of the benefits of having GSAK. GSAK is a very powerful program for managing a Geocache database. (I also use it to manage my NGS Benchmark databases, which can be huge by comparison.)

When you go you should find the Michigan Meridian. Looks like it is in the woods. Check this website: http://www.pmproject.org/MIPM.htm The coordinates I have for that is: 42°25'28.00"N 84°21'53.00"W If you get better coordinates please share them here. Thanks The two benchmarks would by why I'd be interested in going. There's an old thread about the park here: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=93113 And the two benchmarks have been added to Waymarking.com: http://www.Waymarking.com/waymarks/WMA4FT_Michigan_Meridian_Baseline_State_Park http://www.Waymarking.com/waymarks/WMA4VH_Michigan_Prime_Meridian_Benchmark There was apparently a Geocaching event out there at some point in the past. The official website of the park, which doesn't have much detail but does have the phone number mentioned in the thread, is here: http://www.michigandnr.com/parksandtrails/Details.aspx?id=471&type=SPRK Edit: Oh, and this isn't something I'm planning to do anytime soon, it's more like something to put on my bucket list.

A way to get it into Google Maps without downloading any additional software would be to make a pocket query and upload it to this site: http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/ You don't even need to unzip the file, it will accept .zip archives of pocket queries just fine.

Oh. What is being measured? Thanks. I'm going to make an educated guess that it was HV8077 in the photo, which would likely mean he was checking elevation. http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/ds_mark.prl?PidBox=HV8077

Unless I can find a section corner on publicly accessible land that actually has something there, I won't actually be seeing what is inside those monument boxes. And I don't know if PLSS section corners that aren't at a road would have anything there. (The monument boxes I have seen in the road all seem to correspond to PLSS section corners, I haven't seen any others. Though I could have missed some, they're not always easy to see. ) This thread, and the research I've done as a result of it, has incidentally cleared up a little mystery about where the name "Baseline road" came from. And kinda makes me want to try to arrange a visit to Meridian-Baseline Historical State Park.

You could try filtering out micros. It will filter out other micro caches too though. You could also put the pocket query into GSAK and try to use that to filter out the power trail and export a GPX file without it.

I don't see a download link on there, did it go away? The download link, for me, doesn't get underlined or otherwise noticeable for some reason. Look for "You can get it here." and the word here is the link. (If you're still viewing this thread foxtrot_xray, it says KMX not KMZ before the link. I assume that was a typo. )

You could send me an email, but it'd be something I already know. The database is two years old. It'll be updated this summer. So the benchmark viewer website is your work? Somehow I am not surprised. Glad to see you already know about it and thanks for an awesome tool.

Actually, if I saw that I would assume you were the one who submitted the now accepted co-ordinates, and be grateful! Same here. I would find it odd otherwise.

After checking out the online PLSS map here: http://www.geocommunicator.gov/GeoComm/lsis_home/home/ That would definitely be a PLSS section corner. The locations of two other markers also match that map. And now I've learned about a little known landlocked park called Meridian-Baseline State Park. The oddest state park I know of since accessing it would require going through privately owned land. And apparently it has some huge PLSS benchmarks.

The Nuvi I've used for benchmark hunting (and Geocaching) doesn't show the coordinates unless you go into what is almost a hidden page, which also shows satellite signal strength and stuff. When using my smartphone, if I don't have my camera then I'd be taking pics with the phone so obviously putting it in the shot won't work. If I was going to try and report coordinates for a benchmark using my phone I would use a program that does coordinate averaging, so as to get the best coordinates it can get. (I actually did that once, but I lost all the pics of that mark before I got around to asking about making a report and what to report. It wouldn't have been a standard found/not found report, and maybe some day I'll go back there and do it again.) The benchmark I was talking about that I didn't get near is this one: http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/ds_mark.prl?PidBox=HV3104 http://www.geocaching.com/mark/details.aspx?PID=HV3104 As the datasheet says, it was placed to mark the Southern boundary of the park. But when I got to the road I would have had to go on to get to it, there was a No Trespassing sign on the North side, and a Park Boundry sign on the South side. So I don't know what's going on there. Thought I'd try to access it from inside the park on foot, but the area immediately south of Lee's Hill is posted No Trespassing. As the sign at the road doesn't show up in Street View, I kinda wonder if it was a reaction to visits Geocachers/Benchmarkers trying to get to a nearby Virtual Cache or hunting for the benchmark.

Most of the areas I've done benchmark hunting in aren't quite so scenic, so my favorite benchmark pic is of one I didn't know was even there and was not looking for. (It's not in the NGS database but does show up on My Topo maps.) This is a bolt mark that probably dates back to 1912, but it's impossible to tell for sure as the head has been damaged quite a bit. (There are two other bolt marks in the area that date back to 1912 and at least one of them is in much better shape.) This was found on the outer wall of Fort Morgan near the North end of the Eastern section of wall. (It would seem to be placed in the Northeast corner of the fort's area, as shown on My Topo.) It does not seem to be in the NGS database and, as damaged as it is, it's probably not usable. Here's a picture of part of the wall near the end where the bolt is: And here's a pic of a nearby bolt which I found a bit later and still need to log here: NGS and Geocaching.com links: AB4055 873 4635 TIDAL A 9

Gas or water seems unlikely as this was out in the country where people still use propane tanks/wood stoves/electric heat and well water. (And cell phone coverage is still spotty.) The road in question is a county road and state highway and there aren't any turns or intersections for quite a ways. (Out there we have N-S & E-W roads about every mile, terrain permitting.) It is believed to be about 1 mile South of the center of a town, and I think there was another one in the intersection in the center of town. I know there was one North of town, but don't know for sure how far North. I also saw a bunch of them South on that road and in places on a different Country Road/State Highway. (Note that these "highways" are mostly just 2-lane roads in that area, with an occasional turn lane at an intersection.) I haven't seen them in the more urban areas around home, but then I haven't been looking for them and they're easy to miss. It's actually visible on Google Streetview: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=remus,+mi&hl=en&ll=43.582082,-85.145381&spn=0.004002,0.010568&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=35.547176,86.572266&hnear=Remus,+Mecosta,+Michigan&t=h&z=17&layer=c&cbll=43.582082,-85.145381&panoid=bke7wTiRDs2gJR_PZhTcTg&cbp=12,252.58,,0,21.93 Edit: In retrospect, it would be at an intersection except that a county road doesn't actually go through due to a lake. And thus it would be at the intersection of M-66 and an extended 8-mile. Which means it is one mile south of town. Edit2: With a little more looking in Street View, these do seem to be placed about every mile or so along M-66 and I think M-20, even when there isn't an intersection there due to roads not going through.

Before posting coordinates in a NGS recovery report, it might be a good idea to double check the NGS copy of the datasheet. One I was going to submit coordinates for had already been updated from Scaled to Hand Held with slightly more precise coordinates then what I was going to submit. There's another I wanted to do recently and submit with coordinates since it was listed as Not Found by the NGS but Geocachers have found it more recently, but I'm not sure I could get to it without trespassing. It's kind of hard to tell in that particular case since there was conflicting information onsite.

That file is a heck of a lot better then the ones I've recently been experimenting with. One other thing I will mention here, since the benchmark viewer site was mentioned, is that it's database is a little out of date since some markers I've seen listed as Scaled on it have since been upgraded to Hand Held with better coordinates. Don't know who runs that site, so I'll send off an e-mail about it to the maintainer. Note that this means the coordinates for some scaled marks in the Geocaching.com database may be outdated. (When it comes to loading benchmarks onto my smartphone/GSAK I get my datasheets from the NGS rather then use anything in the old Geocaching.com database.)

The benchmark database on this site is not likely to get any updates. The Waymarking.com site (also run by Groundspeak) is where people would add benchmarks and other stuff not found in the year 2000 snapshot of the benchmark database. Note that if it is an actual benchmark (as opposed to something like a property boundary marker) then it may be listed in the regular NGS database. If you were to post a picture of the marker, and/or describe exactly what is stamped on it, then I imagine someone will be able to identify exactly what it is.

The text file included in the shapefile archive is a CSV file with the format described in the first line. And GPSBabel has an input option for that. (Listed as "Universal csv with field structure in first line" in the drop down box.) However GPSBabel can't handle the date format used. It wants yyyy/mm/dd rather then the yyyymmdd exported by the NGS site. Don't know if there are any other potential issues since the unparsable date is a showstopper for GPSBabel. Don't know about any other programs. If you were to get the datasheets instead of using a shapefile you could save those as text files and run them through NGS->GPX. (Can only do 200 datasheets at a time if getting via PIDs, so if you've done a ton of benchmarks you'd have multiple files, which could either be loaded individually or merged via GPSBabel.) I personally would recommend converting the GPX to KML via GPSBabel before loading it into Google Earth, Google Earth would treat the GPX file as a Geocache Pocket Query but if you use a KML file instead you can bring up datasheets in your browser from within Google Earth. Note that with GPX/KML files the date slider will be active, so you can show/hide benchmarks by year.

What is this? A while ago when I was talking to some family members about benchmarks they mentioned that there was one in the middle of a road that a surveyor used when doing a property survey of some nearby land. Wasn't anything listed in the NGS database so I went out to see what it was, and got a pic of what I believe to be the cover for some sort of local survey mark and I'm interested to know if anyone recognizes it. After that I was watching and saw a bunch more on major roads in the Mecosta, MI area. Unfortunately since they're in the middle of the road I couldn't really take the time to open the cover (if that's what it is) and see what is under it.

When looking for marks to look for, with internet access, I start with the well known Benchmark Viewer. http://benchmarks.scaredycatfilms.com/ To actually get datasheets I use the NGS site (downloading state wide monthly archives as well as county specific datasheets) and run them through NGS-GPX. The GPX files are added to different databases in GSAK, which I use to make smaller area specific files to load on my phone. On my phone (Windows Mobile 6.1 HTC Tilt) I use Cachebox for both Benchmarking and Geocaching due to the fact that it can have multiple databases. The larger a database is, the longer it takes to open and work with, so I've split things up quite a bit. But I have thousands of Geocaches loaded in multiple states as well as multiple databases of benchmarks. (I believe there is an Android version of this program that is still being improved while the WM version seems to have been abandoned. The Android version may use the API.) The one downside for me is the time needed to pre-download maps via WIFI since I don't have a good data plan. I have also used a Nuvi 1300LM for Benchmarking/Geocaching via a GSAK macro that can put most of the info from a GPX file into a POI specific data field. The Nuvi has about 12,000 benchmarks from my home state loaded into it that way, with the full datasheets, and probably more from other areas. (That's every benchmark that was in the monthly archive I used.)

I wouldn't take any tablet computer out in the field with me where it would be certain to be subjected to rain/snow/drizzle, dust, dirt, bumps, drops, hot, cold, direct sun - etc... But maybe thats just where I go Geocaching. Same here but where you and I cache I wouldn't take anything but a GPS. (and maybe a cell phone if you can get coverage) I wouldn't take a tablet out in the field either, unless it was specifically designed for that kind of abuse. Depending on what kind of caching you do, there are times a tablet/laptop can be useful. I've used my laptop to look at saved Geocache info, and for puzzle solving stuff. Of course, that was before I became a Premium Member and got access to Pocket Queries. In those cases, the laptop never left the car but was still useful. In the case of caches that require some amount of puzzle solving (Earthcaches, puzzle caches, multi-caches) a portable computer of some type might be useful for that, depending on what kind of GPS device you're using. A Garmin Nuvi for example wouldn't be that good for puzzle solving in the field, but a smartphone, tablet, or even a laptop could be useful depending on what you need to do. Car navigation might be something else a tablet would be useful for, if the primary device (Say Geomate Jr.) can't do it. Of course, if a device doesn't have cellular internet access, then a mapping program with offline maps would be needed.

As far as I know of, no there isn't. In theory if the My Finds PQ was included in the Pocket Query list in the map interface you could use that, but you would still see all the other cache icons unless you hid them all, in which case you would only see the balloons for the caches you found, not the actual cache icons the ballons point to. I would just use GPS Visualizer myself.

The Etrex 30 is the one with an actual electronic compass. And it's made with Geocaching in mind, just drop the unzipped .gpx files into the Garmin/GPX folder and it should have access to all the data in the pocket query. It only comes with a basemap though, so if you want driving directions or a better map you'd have to either buy it or download free maps for Garmin GPS units. The 30 is the one I would buy if I had that kind of cash. Edit: Note that the instructions in the Etrex manuals are for Garmin's Geocaching site rather then this site.

I have not been to that mark, and am no engineer, so I can't say for sure if it moved or if the concrete on one side just got worn away or something. (Freeze/thaw cycle maybe?) The recovery report that lists it as poor just mentions the top is damaged, not that it moved. Of course, I suppose "moving" it could be considered damaging it in the case of benchmark, but if the position was off I would have expected that to be noted in the recovery report. (As I've seen on another datasheet somewhere.)

My personal opinion probably doesn't mean much, so I won't go by it. Here is a pic (taken by a Geocacher) of a mark that was recorded as poor in a recovery report by an individual contributor: http://www.geocaching.com/mark/details.aspx?PID=AA5409 http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/ds_mark.prl?PidBox=AA5409