soreyes

Tide Tool - Free Just ran across this on the LifeHacker feed. Could be very useful for those caches where the tide Does matter. Some GPSr's probably have this built in, but mine does not. I noticed that his site could use a testimonial from a Geocacher.

We found that same one on a cruise as well. We rented the bikes at the end of the dock and rode out to it. The park just past the bridge was great. We NeVeR would have found that view spot without the cache. We also had a great afternoon at The Office tavern in Hoonah thanks to a cache. We had such a blast with the locals that we didn't leave enough time to look for the cache on the way back to the tender.

The first two I mentioned have good burgers and great selections of beer as well as a bunch of other pub type food such as fish n chips. The rockfish has good small pizzas and thats a high bar to jump for someone that was raised in chicagoland. The rockfish also brews its own beer. Both are pretty reasonable on the wallet. What are the general food interests of the group? H-C's suggestions are good as well. I am still unsure if I will be able to join in the trip. I have a lot to get done around the house over the weekend. I also have an event on Sat night that could go pretty late. So it depends on how things go for me on Sat.

I went up to friday harbor a few weeks ago and the ferryI was on did have food. Not a full food service loke they used to but it was the galley area that was open. The onboard food service ended about two weeks ago. It was seasonal. However, there is coffee and food available at the terminal. Its not a vending machine either. A local cheesecake place stepped up to the plate when the onboard sodhexo food service was shuttered about two years ago. Optimally, you should really allow 10 minutes on the way into town to stop at the Donut House. It is on the NE corner of Commercial and 28th street. They are open 24 hours and the donuts are a thing of wonder. They also have good coffee.

My best bets are also on the main drag and in old town listed in order of beeralisciousness - The Brown Lantern Rockfish Grill And El Jinente for Mexican.

If it ends up In Anacortes or around N Whidbey I am more than willing to help out in one way or another. Some of the caches are mine and the others I have found with the exception of a very few. I know the anacortes community forest land trails well so I can offer advice on the routing. I have the ACFL maps scanned, although it would be better if everyone bought thier own copies IMHO, the caches in the Anacortes N Whidbey area would require a great deal of hiking if combined into one swoop. There are some quickies, but I would say that they are in the minority. I am not sure that the same numbers could be acheived here that I have seen in the CM plans for the more poulated areas. But I would love to watch the attempt! And yes, it is often more icy in Belingham than in Anacortes. If nothing else, that would apply to an early morning drive up I5 through the Chuckanuts.

Depending on the timing, I would be interested. I will keep my eye on the thread and see what develops.

I am using GSAK to export HTML files for use on my Nokia 3650. On the device I use Doris browser to view the HTML and it work great. I have a question about the Custom URLs. I would like to have a link to the live cache page on the wap.geocaching.com site available within each cache page. I have the link appearing, but the wap. part seems to be ignored by GSAK and I go right to the geocaching.com html pages rather than wap. The full html is too much data for the little browser to display efficiently. I believe that having 'Custom waypoints' checked within the HTML export is what created the waypoint. Here is what I have within Custom URLs in the settings area: Geocaching.com=http://wap.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?wp=%code The link being generated by GSAK looks like this: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...d4-b3fbca227c97 Where am I going wrong. (Note that i edited this question about 10 minyes after I first posted it after realizing what the generated link looked like.)

It was pretty fun while it lasted, A user could pan around and area on google earth with geocaching waypoints displaying around the center of focus. The waypoints had clickable links to the cache page. Somthing like that can be accomplished with a GPX file though, but it is a little less convenient to get the waypoint names to display in the readable fomat that the script was displaying. According to his blog, we just need to wait until google purchases geocaching.com and then we should be able to do everything for free due to some sort of deal with the api mafia.

Not west of the Mississippi, but on top of it - I cached in 5 states in a day Staritng in SW MO. Then onto NE AR, NW TN, SW KY, and SW IL. I did the last cache in the dark becuase it was late Nov and the day was a little short.

I also tried the ebook route with mobi-pocket and found it to be terrible. I could Not find any info here in the threads, but I have a firend who had the following setup going on my 3650 and its been pretty sweet for me so far - 1. Using GSAK, export your GPX to HTML files. (A 500 waypoint GPX translates to about 3 - 4 megs) 2. Using a USB card reader, put the resulting 'Cache' folder onto the root of the MMC card. I have a 16 meg card with the phone, so there is plenty of space for data. 3. Install Doris Browser onto the MMC card. Its about $15. Why Doris? Because the browsers that comes on the phones do not seem to support the viewing of files local to the MMC card. 4. create a bookmark in Doris to the index of your Cache web pages. eg: file:///e:/cache/index.htm ..and that's it. Note that there may be other browsers that allow viewing HTML off of the MMC card, but I am not aware of them myself. Please let me know.

Google Areometer This may be useful or just plain interesting to some of you. Others may flame me and say it's off topic. Its possible someone might want to include an area measurement within a Cache page. Pretty easy to use: 1. Click on the map to place points. 2. The enclosed area is shown below (the map).

The above are the strongest points keeping my from getting anything different. It is very convenient when trying to get out the door quickly to do a little caching with some up to date data. I can also keep a pile of differnet Maps available for hot swapping while out in the world. I have a 256 card with around 180 meg free with topo maps of all of Washington State as well as smaller subsets which may or may not load faster(Still experimenting with that). I also have street maps of Southwest BC. Mine is not a Platinum, just the plain old Meri-yellow GPS. I got it for $125 two and a half years ago and I am confident I could not have done any better for the money. So until I break it, I am a happy owner. In my experience, the slingshot is not really all that bad. I regularly cache with someone who has a Garmin 60C and he isn't getting to waypoints any better than I am. It seems to be a wash. I have learned what many others have said is true: When within a reasonable distance, stop looking at the GPSr's for a while and search by noggin while they the averaging drama on the unit settles down a little.

I remember seeing this on the forums a while back. Its a Geocache container! Cash Machine Cache

You can slow it down a little by vieiwing the feeds by forum section. The Northwest US section is 21, it's posted in the URL as showforum=8. Applying that to the RSS feed - http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/rss.php?forum=21 Edit to mention that for some reason some sections such as the 'Web Site' section don;t work for some reason. Most do though!

I am not having that issue. The main PQ I use is about 490 waypoints, It loads that just fine. I have also made a Much larger group of waypoints from combined PQ's and was able to succussfully load 1914 waypoints with no crash. I process the PQ's through GSAK so that I can view the Smart Names that click with my brain a little easier than the GPxxxx values. It involves opening the PQ in GSAK and then exporting as .GPX with Waypoint Name tag = %smart. BTW, it's absolutely awesome to fly around the mountains and islands of NW Washington and view the terrain on which the waypoints sit. From there, it is one click to open the cache page and view some details. I wonder if this should be moved to GPS Units and Software?

The caption I put on this one was "Heading out to the middle of the pond" The log I got to after this one was actually submerged. I balanced across an underwater slime covered log for about 20 feet to get to a bog island. In the end I had to post a DNF. I probably never had to leave the shore in the first place. I still need to get back and find that one.

I use 'giveaway' hints on some of my caches where I am concerned about impact on the area. I feel that I created the caches to show the seekers the journey and destination rather than the container itself.

I'm with shoknaw on this one I like the idea of Deception Pass as well. I will add: from the viewpoint of the Lighthouse Point cache. It's a view enjoyed by many cachers, but not seen by the majority of the Deception Pass SP tourists. Other ideas - - An aerial view at an angle of the San Juan Islands - An aerial view at an angle of the Skagit River Valley - Mt Baker - Peach Arch - the Burlington Outlet mall

5090 around my zip of 98221. Its not a city though surrounded by a few - Seattle, Victoria, and Vancouver areas are all within 100 miles.

As a former FIB (Freakin Illinois Bustard), please allow me to offer three words (pictures) of encouragement for the trip -

I recently found a cache that was hidden near a blackberry bush. Some of the thorns had made their way into the cache. Imagine if a child was to find that! They might use it to cut thier arm off or worse cut the head off of another person! Luckilly, I was the one who found it so I was able to remove it safely and burn it until it was just an ash. The worst part was walking back to the car from the cache with that thorn - talk about dangerous. You know what they say about running with thorns! I still have the ashes of the thorn and I was thinking of returning them to the cache. Would that be safe?

I wish I would have known you were out here. You ended your trip in the San Juans and I live in Anacortes. I would have bought you a beer, coffee, or water and we could have grabbed a cache or something. Glad you made it back safely.

With a call from W for fuel conservation its more imprtant than ever to cache efficiently. Here are a few thoughts that might be obvious, but also might help reduce the sting of the pump: We probably don't need to be driving out of the way for just one cache. Combine as many caches into a trip as possible. One cache a day for 5 days or 5 caches in one day? Stop and pick up some caches on the way home from work or school There is also the idea of cache-pooling. If you don't know enough local cachers in person, organize cache trips on the regional boards. Figure out who has the most efficient vehicle in a group and get everyone to chip in on fuel. Public Transportation is an alternative for the metro and suburban area cachers! - Park & Cache! Cache & Conserve!

When I started caching, the majority of caches I found were within a plastic bag as described above. I think that the local cachers are using better containers lately and the need for that has diminished. I still see tattered plastic wrapped around a perfectly nice looking container from time to time. I think that a better approach to protecting the container from the elements is to leave it in a position that keeps the lid grooves away from falling rain. Keep the roof up so to speak. I also suspect that some of the soggy caches are caused by being open for a find while it is raining out. The solution to this is to try and shield it as best as possible while the innards are exposed. Not always easy, and maybe obvious, but just the same it should be considered. If you ever see a cacher walking out of the woods with a tattered plastic bag and then putting it in a garbage can or putting it in the car, it isn't me. That would be wrong and I would never condone such a terrible and senseless act.