Braff-n-MandaRue

I've noticed this same thing on my Colorado 300. It doesn't do it every time I plug it in, but when it does all I have to do is remove the SD card. I can plug the SD card back in after the unit connects to the computer, and it will pick up the card then and I can transfer maps and files as needed to it then.

I started with a Blue Garmin Legend. (Gave to a Friend interested in geocaching) Then had a Garmin Venture Cx. (sold when HCx models came out) Afterwards I purchased a Garmin Legend HCx, which I still use for backup. Now I own a Garmin Colorado 300. Wife has: Magellan Meridian Gold (back up unit). Magellan Triton 1500 as a main unit.

I "Braff" was in the cub scouts, and then the boy scouts. Was only in the boyscouts about a year, and then the group dissolved. There weren't enough volunteer's to keep scouting going. Around that same time just about all scouting in the area stopped, no cubs, boys, or eagles. I hated that it had happened because I had looked forward all those years to finally becoming an eagle scout, and then, it all just dissapeared. There have been a few small upstarts since then, but nothing ever seems to really make it. There still just aren't enough volunteers to help, and actually, they don't encourage volunteering. I've offered to help several times with different groups, but they never take me up on it. The ones that do volunteer want to do it all themselves without help from anyone else, and before long the group usually just gives up.

Glad you explained that to me, my mind full of simple expectations couldn't figure that out. Actually... I knew what the Colorado was before I bought it, I read the advertisements, the reviews, etc., and it came exactly as advertised. I kind of see a lot of the arguments about track management and waypoint averaging as pointless. They weren't advertised as having it, so why should I expect they will ever change it. It's kind of like buying a car without a radio in it. I make the decision to buy the car with no radio. Should I later complain about the car not having a radio? Even though I bought it knowing the car would not include the radio. I suppose I should complain to the company and demand that they give me a radio for the car, even though it's my fault for buying the model without the radio, even though they sale models that have a radio and I could have bought any one of those. Garmin already sold GPSr's with the features asked for, it would have been just as easy to buy one of those. Edit: Fixing the problems that they came screwed up with, that's different, like working the bugs out.. Kinda like when they re-call a car because it might suddenly burst into flames or something.

I think I must have a defective Colorado. I actually like it and don't much to complain about with it. There has to be something wrong with mine since I like it.

The caches on my ignore list are basically all by a single cacher and his sockpuppets. He is the type that thinks that putting caches on guardrails and road signs in the middle of curves on busy highways is fun. It's not my idea of fun, so I don't hunt them. He is also notorious for doing some pretty lame copy caches. Where he takes everyone else's cool caches, puts his lame twist on them, and hides them. I gave them a try and found a few. His caches were just always lame to me. Not to say they aren't a great deal of fun for others, and I know some people really enjoy his type of hides. They just aren't for me and they wind up on my ignore list. It makes them easier to filter out when I search from my home coords, so they aren't cluttering up my search's. They aren't necessarily stuck their forever either. Sometimes I will hunt for a couple on my ignore list that may be in an interesting area were no other cachers have hidden caches yet. It's kinda like the library analogy, except I just have the books I don't want to read by a certain author I don't like stored in a box. Sometimes I will go to the box and get one or two out on a slow day and give them a read.

Might be good if you want to learn a little more than the basics. Most cachers are happy just downloading the coords to the GPS, reading the cache pages, then getting a smiley. I think if you keep to the K.I.S.S. principal, you'll have more fun.

ummmmm - no http://gpsinformation.net/gpsclouds.htm I stick with my original answer. Based on the fact that GPS signals do not propagate through water. The reason that getting signal under heavy tree canopy in summer can be so tough, the water in the leaves block the signals. Anyway... once the snow starts to lay and melt on the GPS there can be water drops and films of water form on the GPS, messing with the signal. Just the fact that it's snowing doesn't make much difference, it's the water that gets on the GPS itself that does. http://gpstracklog.typepad.com/gps_tracklo...cloud_cove.html

Sorry.... snow is just one of them things things that will always mess with a GPS signal.

This is something I'd be interesting in finding out as well. I have some tracks that I would like to average together, if there is any software out there that will do it.

Back in my college days we had discussions on subjects like this. The Professor had worked in the plastic industry for many years, specifically in a plant that made many types of plastic bottles and other such things. Basically, if you did a little investigation on any plastic product, you could find some harmful chemical that can leach out into the fluids that they hold. It was especially concerning when you consider the amount of time that bottled water, milk, juice, etc. spent on shelves in stores before they were bought and drunk from. They spent all that extra time sitting, collecting potentially harmful chemicals from the plastics that contained them. My professor also had a good saying about such things as well. "It's the dose that makes the poision". Meaning, are you really going to ingest enough of said chemicals at any one time to really hurt you? If BPA is getting into your water on your hikes, will it ever be enough to cause you any harm? Maybe it doesn't get into the water at all, and it's just an environmental issue, that using BPA can cause harm to the environments near where it is used. With these things it can be really hard to tell. It's hard to trust news reports created by people with no special training in the subject. It's hard to believe people who heard something somewhere that something was bad for them. Especially when truth is, that we probably do use items everyday that contain chemicals that are potentially harmful to us. Might be something to the scare tactics idea, especially since those types of things happen often. Then again, maybe BPA is going to kill all of us with #7 bottles.

It doesn't seem like anyone can build a good GPSr anymore. Just about everyone hates the Garmin Colorado, and I've read quite a few complaints on the Oregon as well. I guess I need not say much about Magellan, nobody seemed to ever have anything at all good to say about the Triton series. Even the new DeLorme PN-40 has been complained on, the screen is too small. Are all these companies really that bad, have expectations became to high, or what?

Speaking of DeLorme. I've been using the DeLorme Topo USA v6.0. I find it to be a great program for keeping track of hikes. A little learning curve, but pretty powerful too. You can also create maps and share them with people as well by just sending them a link to click on. Here is one of my mapshares with a profile attached: Hidden Arch Loop - Red River Gorge Kentucky

I just don't think it would work out with GC.com. There are just too many people. The problem with people is that they lie. What I'm saying is, if you are always rating caches of people whom you don't know, it would be easy to give a more honest rating, you don't have to worry about hurting a strangers feelings. The problem comes in to rating caches in your local area. It's a place where you get to know the local cachers in one form or another. You may not ever meet them face to face, but you hunt each others caches, talk on forums, or you may in fact meet them at an event face to face. So, you do get to know them in some form or another. Then, once you get to know them, you don't want to hurt their feelings, so you would give the cache they place a higher rating than it deserves. Given that most caches are going to be found by the local cachers, and not so many out of the area, the ratings would always have a tendency to be higher rated, because the local crew didn't want to hurt their cache buddy's feelings.

I think that's the most important thing to remember while geocaching. Everyone plays the game a different way, with different goals in mind. There isn't some main grand prize we are all shooting for. Caches that I think are lame, they may think are great. So, I just play the game my way, keep to myself, and I have more fun that way. But to answer the question..... Yes... I do have one that I ignore. I'll hunt their Earthcaches, but nothing else. We had a run in a few years ago, and I just don't like the guy, so I don't hunt his caches. It's how I play the game.

I remember coming across the gc.com website quite a few years ago. I was broke and in college at the time, so I couldn't get a GPSr to try it out. I also live in a very rural area, and there were no caches close by for me to try and find, so I kind of forgot about it for a while. Then back in 2005 I got a GPS for my birthday. I was searching online for things to do with it, and came across the site again. I went out and tried unsuccessfully to find a cache. I was a little dissapointed that I couldn't find it, of course it turned out to really be missing, but I didn't know that at the time. The next day a brand new geocache popped up about three miles from my house. I knew about where it was at, but put off finding it for a couple more days. After it had set there a couple days my wife (girlfriend at the time) and I went out to search for it. After a few minutes of searching she spotted it out. It was our first find, and our first FTF as well. Of course, we didn't know what an FTF was then, and we were just happy to have got to find something. It's been a little over three years now, and we haven't found an amazing number of caches, but we still go out and find a few from time to time. We FINALLY hit 200 the other day. It's for the most part been pretty fun, we've met some good people, a not so good person, and been to many great places. We were discussing the other day how geocaching has changed over the years. It went from us finding pretty much all 15 in the area, to now there being hundreds in the area and we are still searching for those. A first to find could be accomplished even if you put the hunt off a day or two, but now you have about an hour to find it before someone else does. There have also been several other changes, but it's what keeps it interesting. It's like an ever evolving game.

I recently ordered a Colorado 300, and am currently awaiting it's delivery. I'm pretty excited about getting it, and think it will be great for what I would like to use it for. I read all the reviews I could find, and thought about it for a long time before finally purchasing the unit. I took all things in to consideration, and finally decided that this was exactly what I wanted in a GPS. Hoping I won't be dissapointed.

Sold it

Alright, I have a Palm z22 and a Garmin eTrex Venture Cx that I would like to sale together. The z22 only has a charger with it. When I bought it off of e-bay, I didn't get the USB cable with it. I've been using a USB cable that came with my camera and it works fine with it. The software I downloaded straight off of the Palm website. The Garmin eTrex Venture is like brand new. I still have the box that in came in. It's not be used a whole lot. Went on a few geocaching trips with it, and that's about it. I bought it hoping that it would rejuvinate my interests in caching, but it didn't work. There isn't anything at all wrong with it. The only thing missing from it is the lanyard, I took it off because it was always in the way, and don't remember where I put it. Other than that, it's a great GPS and ready to go. I'm asking $130 for both. You can leave a message here, or send me an e-mail at elicaudill@windstream.net if you are interested.

I've been having bad DNF luck myself lately. It's like I completely forgot how to geocache or something. Probably 1 out of 4 is a DNF these days. The way I see it, a DNF just give you another chance to go geocaching again.

We hid a micro cache near a nice place beside a creek, with a big wide pull off beside the road. Since hiding, a dead dog has turned up, as well as some dead fish parts. Because of the nice pull off of the road, and it being in a remote type area, it also seems to be a popular place to drop off some dead animals. Some of the local cachers and myself joked about the dead dog being the geocache, but they all really knew better, and once the smell died down everyone found the real thing. Point being, dead animals happen. Sometimes the best places to hide a cache, also turn out to be the best places to get rid of some unwanted things too.

Double Post

Here where I live in Southeastern Kentucky, I am working with a local ATV club establishing some trails. So far I have two caches placed on them that are ATV friendly, but are still in places were people with automobiles can reach them. When the trails getting closer to an "official" opening I plan on putting a few more out to be found by ATVer's looking for a little something extra to do along their ride. So far, I have a couple of people from the ATV club interested in hunting for some of them. They have already bought GPSr's and found their first couple. The more people hear about it, the more they want to try it out. It's a great thing to have an ATV, a GPS, and get to combine the two together and do some geocaching while riding an ATV.

Luckily for us, we saved many a local cache for just such an occurrence. So, we've been kinda just staying close to home and getting some of the caches we've passed on for a while, so gas hasn't been as big an issue. Our vacation trip did get down though. We will only be traveling about half as far as we originally planned, and going to a place were we will be able to do lots of walking and not so much driving while we are there.

That's actually a really good point. I have passed on some geocaches because of that. Some geocaches I have been to, had no parking area at all nearby. There were no bike paths or anything else nearby either. It kind makes you wonder what some hiders are thinking sometimes. I'm not apt to just park in the middle of a two lane road, and go wondering over the edge of a hill looking for a cache, not interested enough in it to have a car hit and destroyed.