debtodd007

Once the road ends with my Oregon, I find I have to hit the where to icon and recaclulate off road. The automatic feature doesn't seem to switch. It will just keep you circling around on road.

One of my caches (GCVC9G) was found before published. It was another cacher looking to place a cache and just happened to pick the same spot. The sent us an E-mail before the cache was even published. I thought it was pretty comical. I think they deserve the FTF. They were cacheing and found a cache.

I hunt deer with a handgun. I've seen mountain lions on the trail, and even had one follow me for a couple miles one time when I was fishing. Scary I've seen bears out on the trail. I've run into rattlesnakes more than once. I don't carry a handgun when caching or hiking unless its hunting season. I do carry pepper spray (bear repelling strength) and walking stick. The pepper spray design for bears will work fine on mountain lion if needed, and will nearly blind a human. Actually, I've been more fearful of some urban caches in metropolitan areas than I've been out in the woods. I usually have my kids with me, and often family friends. Personally I just don't see the need to carry anthing more than pepper spray when out in the woods in Montana.

I've found three caches that required climbing up a tree, two fairly easy, one very scary climb. Also have one that I could see, but couldn't figure how the cache owner managed to place the cache where it was. As others have said, make difficutly ratings appropriate.

GSAK is a great program, I've had it for close to three years. I bought an Oregon 400t last April, and I haven't opened GSAK since.

I was facing the same issue as you about 4 months back. I have friends with the 60csx. My previous handheld was a Rhino 120 which I've used for 3 years. Paperless geocaching was via a Palm Tungsteen E2. Initially, I loved the Oregon 400t for driving and routing and map capacity, and profiles, but it sucked as a geocaching unit. The many years old Rhino 120 was much, much, much better. Around beta 2.94? or there abouts (I've loaded so many beta's I haven't kept track) the Oregon 400t all of sudden settled down and become a GREAT geocaching unit. Now I love it. Beta releases seem to come out about once a month and each one just gets better and better. While I'll always carry my old Rhino 120 as a backup unit, I've come to really like my Oregon 400t. While the debate between the 60csx and Oregon is really 50/50 now, I truly believe that Oregon units are about 2-3 beta releases away from surpassing 60CSS in ever area. From my perspective, the only remaining deficiency in my Oregon is flyers in the track plots. (This one does bug me a bit as I keep lots of tracks of hiking, cross country skiing, and off road 4x4 driving tracks).

Just send the maps together. You can use the profiles to control which mapset is showing at any given time. You can customize the current ones or create a new one. I've added a couple more, and the sole reason is to display different map sets at any given time.

My wife bought me a Rhino 120 in 2003/2004, I don't even remember when. I had it for a couple of years before we stumbled across geocaching. I may be foolish, but I used to hike/explore all over Montana with compass and topo maps. Now I've reached the point where I don't carry hard copy topos anymore, just 2 GPS units and extra batterys. Geocaching is maybe 10% of GPS time. The rest: 1. Hunting, plotting out terrain and areas to hunt. Marking where I originally parked. 2. Fishing, the number of fishing waypoints marked on large lakes and dams is numerous. 3. Hiking. I don't necessarily like to follow trails if I can find a shorter way to my destination. I generally keep tracks of these and the special ones get saved forever. (No, I probably will not share these with anyone but family). 3. Cross country skiing. Again we don't like to follow trails, but would rather chart our own. With kids, who are still learning I use my GPS & topo maps to avoid areas that they may not be able to handle. There are times we will just park and go. GPS marks the car (both units) and we just explore. 4. Driving, I'm a a country boy from small town Montana who spends 30 weeks or more each year working in large cities(mostly in the western 1/3 of the US). I'm not sure how I go around before having my GPS units.

I've had mine a couple of months now. As a geocaching unit, performance sucked until I upgraded to version 2.93 software. Now I love it. I've loaded 2.94, but haven't went geocaching since I loaded that a couple of days ago.

Have you tried to load them directly into your 400t? I've done 400-500 directly into my 400t with no problem when I travel, even though I may only do a couple caches when I'm there.

We've done a few memorable funny caches. Not sure we top 500 film cannisters in an ammo can though that would be torture. A couple of favorites. In a cliff area where snakes and black widow spiders are common, I peered into a crevice and "An oversized goose decoy". I actually jumped, as I'd never seen a goose up in the cliffs before. Another cache in a local park. Your hunting for a small cache in a dense forest around a fallen tree. Pick up a branch and a rubber spider jumps out at you. Surprising as heck. If you lift the branch quickly, the rubber spider really jumps as it is attached to the stick with an elastic cord. The log is bison capsule glued to the underside of the rubber spider.

You seem to have a very harsh attitude for someone with 9 months in the game and less than 100 caches. If you don't like running into other cacher's get out of town and go seek remote caches. We have a couple of hundred cache's with-in 10 miles of our home and we'll probably never visit most of these. Caching in town doesn't appeal to us most of the time, but we do some becuase it takes us to urban parks and trails we would otherwise not discover. Logging 20-50 cahces a day doesn't appeal to us. We are more interested in the area, than the specific cache. A couple of my favorites are GCQZRC and GCHYQ6. We look for caches like this because they are unique and out of the way. You need to dedicate a whole day to doing each of these caches. Look at the log's. Unlikely you will run into anyone else. We even placed a cache like this GC1B7K2. We've also found cache's that weren't published yet seeking to hide a cache, and had an unpublished cache of ours GCVC9G found by another cacher before it was published. This is just a fun game that often leads to interesting places you might not otherwise find. If you run into another cacher, rather than get upset, say hi, visit awhile and make a new friend. Join a club, many cachers are just cool folks. Chill out and enjoy the game.

We log most them in Montana where we live. Mainly because we plan on returning later and looking again. Occassionally if I'm traveling out of state I don't get to it.

I don't log virtuals but have visited a number of them. Some are interesting and historical, some are a waste of time. Often one really pertinent one makes up for 5 or 6 that lack significance to me. Surprisingly, some of the ones I find of particular interest are in areas where an actual cache could have been placed anyway. Living in Montana, I've visited Glacier Park many time and hiked many of the trials during the 10 years I lived in Missoula. Now I live closer to Yellowstone Park which I visit every October, December, Febuary, April, and rarley a time or two in May-August. I believe most of the virtuals in these two great National Parks are of no special interest. However, there are some gems in both parks. Sidenote - 7 or 8 years ago my wife purchased a book with 100 day hikes in Yellowstone National Park. We checked off close to 45 of them. A couple of years ago I ran into a ranger who was displaying pictures of his time in the park, somewhere close to 20 years worth. We got to comparing favorite hikes in the park and some our favorites were the same has his. He stated very few people ever hike many of our joint favorites. Second sidenote: Yellowstone Park in the winter is a totally different world. My family has spent the week between Christmas and New Years in Yellowstone since 1996, mostly X-crounty skiing and sledding. Often you are all alone on the trails and hearing wolves howl, or coyotes yipping is pretty cool. Everyone should visit Yellowstone in the winter once in their lifetime. If you don't like winter then I'd say the best time of the year to visit Yellowstone is late September, early October. This is actually my favoratime time. All the tourists are gone, Elk are bugling, bears are active stuffing themselves for winter and fall colors are beautiful.

I went through a couple of Rhino 120's when they first came out. First one - cracked screen, little screw in back attached to belt clip unscrewed while I was rappelling. Fell about 40 feet and hit the rocks. Recieved a refurbished unit. Within the next 3-4 months, the batteriess kept loosing contact and it would power down. (common problem on some early Rhino 120's). The 2nd time they sent a brand new unit. Not a problem since then. They gave RMA #'s no questions asked both times. The first time with the screw was potentially my fault as much as Garmin's.

This happened to me also. It appears to be triggered by a single profile switch, changing from geocaching profile to automotive profile. The auto profile gets corrupted. Unsure if this is fixed in the 2.86 beta version or not.

I've had my Oregon 400T for only a couple of weeks. I was wondering if anyone has loaded maps from metroguide on the 400t and if they are routable on that device. I've discovered, in just a week, that their are a number of dirt roads and 4x4 trails that show up on Metroguide Maps on my Rhino 120, that are not showing on the Oregon 400t with city navigator loaded. If it works, I could create a new profile to use the older maps when necessary. I have about 1/2 of western US loaded on a memory card and the mapset is not that large.

My two favorites: Lame Colt's cache (GCHYQ6). Miller Time 4x4 (GCQZRC) @10,125 ft). Both are memorable for the journey's. We went close to 100 miles to reach both cache's. Both caches are only visted by 2-3 caches a year. Lame Colt's cache will allow you see wild horses and a great cave. Miller Time 4x4 will give you spectacular views. Both are best reached with a 4x4, but both could be reached, at certain times of the year, with a 2 wheel drive pickup with adequate ground clearance and skillful driving. Both are inaccessible at other times of the year unless you want to put miles on snowshoes. Your family sedan will not get you anywhere near either one.

I live in Montana and have experience Mountian Lions following me when I've been fishing. Family has also ran into bears on trails on two occasions. Before I had children, I would carry a .357. I no longer carry a gun unless its hunting season. The modern pepper sprays (designed for bears, not law enforecment) are more than effective. I carry a fanny pack that holds two water bottles. This pack is never unloaded and contains the following: Extra batteries 4 inch folding knife Small leatherman tool Waterproof matches Mangnesium firestarter and flint (Always have two ways to start fire) Purell hand santizer (best fire starting aide I've seen, It will burn in a water puddle) Whistle Hand cranked LED flashlight Cheap emergency rain poncho. My wife has a similar fannypack with a lighter and lacking the magnesium fire starter. My two kids carry small camel backs with whistles and compasses attached. They also carry emergency rain ponchos. On my belt goes a Rhino 120 and the pepper spray. Usually one of us will have binoculars. I usually carry an aluminum walking stick that also has a compass and a waterproof container with matches. On a sidenote: the strike anywhere matches are getting hard to find now days.

My wife and I like remote caches and we have done several here in Montana that only get 1 or 2 visits a year.

I've always wanted to do a night cache with an astronomy theme (my nightime hobby). I've even envisioned a multicache where a planisphere would be needed to solve the final stage or a logging reqirement based on constellation position. There was one night cache in my area, but it was archived before I did it. Every time it was a nice night, I found myself at the telescope hunting far away galaxy's or star clusters. Dollars in astronomy gear far exceed $ in GPS by 10 to 1. This thread is inspiring me to get off my rear and do what I envision.

Logging DNF's is interesting. I know individuals who find caches and never log period. There was time when we didn't log DNF's but kept the cache pages. We've started to log DNF's recently so we don't have to keep cache pages. One side effect of logging DNF's. The cache owner often sends us hint's. That's a very nice gesture on the part of the owner, but often we'd rather not have the hint, especially with local caches, because we like to go back and search again. There was one cache about 50 yards from my wife's office. It took her 4 or 5 visits before she found it. Recently we went back to a DNF that we logged exactly 1 yr and 2 days before. It was fun to find it the second time around. I see both side's of the issue. Some of us are just busy. We've actually went back to two cache's we've found before because we hadn't logged the finds, even though to we try to get every one. It's a fun activity, I don't believe people have to complicate it with rules about logging cache's.

After you have a few more finds, you gain a certain appreciation for ratings and how wrong the can be for you. In our area, their is one individual who is always posting 1 to 1.5 stars that stump us, but not others. Our mind just doesn't think like his. We just add 2 stars to his caches because they are clever and always seem obvious after we find them. He's bad karma for us, so we actually seek his caches out. Just enjoy the hunt. As for GPS there can be a great deal of variability, older units are less accurate. Try to approach the area for several directions and you'll be able to triangle in on a area to search. This is especially true if there are sudden elevataion changes in the area. Look are your error estimation; doubling that will give you a search zone. My caches' you can walk right up to, others are so clever you can be touching them and not realize you holding the cache in your hand.

Traveled 200 miles for one cache (Lame Colt Cache, GCHYQ6). This included 30 miles of low range 4x4 travel over rocks and through mud and then short hike to the cache. This cache only gets 2-3 visits a year. Did another high altitude cache, (Miller Time 4x4, GCQZRC) only 30 yards of 4x4 low range in a steep section that involved 180 miles in one day. That cache was only logged 3 times in 2006. Posted pictures with both logs.