SilentWolf

I feel your pain, always discouraging to get in a situation like that...... hindsight's always 20/20 right guys/gals?

Sweet ! I'm floating in the low 90's right now, and hopefully with a day off tomorrow I can hit my 100 as well.

When I was shopping for mine I was down to the Oregon 300 and the Dakota 20 (since I wanted full paperless capability) and I chose the Oregon because it's bigger..... sound weird? In all honesty the Dakota screen and unit overall just felt too small for my large paws. I haven't regretted it one bit - I love my Oregon.

I bought the Oregon 300 and downloaded some free topo maps, then used the money I saved over the 400t to get the City Navigator maps and installed them. True that it doesn't "speak" to you, but it clearly displays where to turn and does give a warning "tone" or beep when you're nearing a turn or what not. To be honest I have been looking at a nuvi 500 since it does seem to have all the same capabilities, but it obviously not "intended" to be used off-road and isn't as durably built as the Oregon. My thought was to have it and leave it in the car all the time, but use my Oregon off-road or on the trail as the situation requires. But the battery life in the Oregon is WAY better and you can switch the AA's if you need anytime, whereas the nuvi runs a built-in rechargeable if I recall correctly, that unless you bought a bunch more of them you'd be limited.

I researched the heck out of all the GPS's out there right now before I bought mine, and I ended up getting the Garmin Oregon 300 with the City Navigator maps installed, as well as a few of the free topo's of my surrounding area (with a 4gig MicroSD card installed). I have complete paperless geocaching, an extremely easy to use GPS, with complete on-road navigating and routing all in one unit. I simply re-calculate for off-road when I get near the cache so I can use the compass. No need for a PDA, no need for a second "on road" gps, the touch-screen rocks, (!) add a RAM mount to hold it in the car with the 12v cable if you desire, and you'll be as happy as SilentWolf...

I think you better tread lightly here - some people may take it offensively, thinking that you're making fun of the "real" memorials that are out there ?

Yea even with the add-on programs I still dont' think the 60 can be 100% paperless.

The one's I found at Walgreens' were the name brand ones. I cleaned em'out

Yea I really don't see pop bottles being good cache containers.... but that's me.

Well I did some quick looking at the ones you listed.... 3 of the 4 are micros' - not exactly the easiest way to start your caching experience. The 2 schoolhouse ones, after reading through the logs some, seem to be no good either as they have been muggled and destroyed several times - there's a good chance that they're not even there or have been moved from their original coordinates. You did good looking for ones of low difficulty, but I'd suggest looking for some that are at least small or even better regular size containers, and it's also a good idea to read back through the logs some before going out - it can save you a lot of headache if the guy before you found a problem and reported it, and the cache owner hasn't been able to fix it yet... We've all been there, most of us more than once Don't give up

I have the 300 and bought the city navigator maps - and it's nice. It's handy to start off in street mode, get navigated to the cache site, then recalculate off road and find it from there. I think i'm going to get me a nuvi also, but mostly just so when I get me a new motorcycle i'll have it for that. The routing on the Oregon with city navigator works fine, despite the maps not being 100% accurate. And just for the record I've found the 12v adapter cord doesn't make the screen any brighter, it just keeps the backlight turned on all the time instead of going off after a minute or two. But I dont' have any trouble seeing it at all.

They're not free, but I've found that Walgreens is carrying 3 or 4 different sizes now - at least my local store has had them.

I don't know anything about the marine services so I'm probably not much help, but I have the north america city navigator on my oregon 300 and all my POI's have the information you mention, so I know the Oregon is capable of displaying the info.

That's good to know - was thinking about picking up a 550 myself as it is motorcycle friendly. Nice to know I won't have to carry my Oregon too if I want to cache

Why not just send the CO a personal message or e-mail if you've got something "not nice" to say? No reason to trash up the logs in my opinion.

Yea I don't think I'd trade for a pencil or pen unless it's obvious it's a signature item.

Awesome isn't it? Welcome!

Yea I don't know if any of the nuvi's have full paperless capability do they?

Perhaps because Southeast is 24k data while Topo USA is 100k data...high resolution data equals higher price. .... and BINGO was his Name-o! But yea - that's why.. I'd also suggest the "free" topo's as they seem to be pretty good from what i've seen. I've got them on my Oregon300.

LMAO

Well although I detect a hint of sarcasm in your post, just for fun let me tell you what I did - since the spot is not in any city limits I checked the county plat map just to see who controlled the land, and found it was BLM land. So, I went to their website and did a search on the words Geocache and Geocaching and found a PDF bulletin released back in 2005 that explained their general stance on having a cache on their managed land. It states that as long as it is not placed in a designated Wilderness or Wildlife protection area, that it is basically fine as long as it doesn't overstep what they consider to be a "casual use" activity. To make a long explanation short, an actual geocaching "event" would fit that definition, but a single cache wouldn't. So I should be fine right? Well, just to appease any doubts, I went ahead and e-mailed the local field office here, who's director I know since we have worked with him in building an R/C flying field on BLM land recently, and let him know what my intentions were, and asked what were his thoughts. His reply said since it wasn't on any restricted land and it fit their guidelines that it was fine. (just fyi there's already 2 cache's along the same road further up the mountain) They are well aware of Geocaching and it's place, and actually support it (from what I can tell) as a means to get people out - I even found a PDF pamphlet on their website talking about "stepping lightly" while geocaching or while enjoying the land that the public has every right to enjoy.

I believe it's 2000

It's very rare that I take anything from a cache - basically only if my 1 year old see's something he wants to play with (or chew on is more like it) but I usually drop in a few items if I come across a cache that's not very well stocked. I haven't got my signature items ready yet but I plan on just leaving them as well. The treasure for me is just finding the cache

Yea the extra set of eyes is always helpful, plus the safety factor of having a buddy along if you're out away from civilization is nice. I do a lot of "urban" ones on my own like before or after work but if something were to happen it wouldn't be too long before someone came along. Sometimes in the high-muggle areas it's nice to be alone - one person can look much more inconspicuous than 3 or 4 gathered around somewhere.

Yea, since I don't watch much TV I pulled up the vid to check it out - and oh boy.... If I every become that obsessed with ANYTHING, especially geocaching, y'all have my permission to strangle me and stuff me in a suitcase!!!!