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Hello Fellow Geocachers! I saw and heard about the new Triton line, and on blind faith, I purchased a Triton 2000 just knowing that I made the right choice without all the research. As I assumed Magellan would build on the experience and feedback from how well the Explorist 600 worked, which I also own and use, would have all the features plus the ones we all have been waiting for! Well, I have played with mine for 3-4 days now, and did a comparative feature test between the Explorist 600 and the Triton 2000. For the Geocaching functions, as I have been using them for the last couple of years. I have to say , I love the look & feel, and the size. I have fairly large hands, so it fits me well. I like the stiff buttons as they will wear in I am sure. The Display is great! Even the touch screen works well! And the resolution is what I have been waiting for! I use a Palm Tungsten C to do my Paperless Geocaching, using CacheMate, and relied on the found function in the X600 which date and time stamped my Found caches for the logging order. The ability to use Geocache waypoint files and as many as the SD card would hold, always made a great way to cache in specific locations. Just create another Center in GSAK, and boom 200 caches in a file called the caching location typically. Even the Map management was pretty much the same process. Crunch a Map in Mapsend Direct Route then load it in USB file transfer mode. The deal here is the USB function in the X600, it made the SD card look like a hard drive directly to the O/S. Well,, I am really hoping they are not finished with the programming of features, as it needs some work to get the features needed to make this an Awesome Hand Held. I must have read the Forums for hours in the last 3-4 days too, and I didn't really see any technical comparisons between the explorist features and the Triton features, and decided to break my Lurker status and make a contribution. Since there are a lot of things to talk about and consider, lets break it out in sections. I will not talk so much about the Camera, MP3 and Media functions, I want to talk about what is fundamental to All Magellans from the SporTrak Color my first, to the eXplorist 500/600 which I have fully used all features. Lets start with the basics from out of the box. All parts were in the box. Neatly packed. I put in the 2 Alkaline Batteries that came in the box, and powered on the Unit. I didn't even crack open the Manual yet. I being a Techno Geek, I like to hack my way through the Interface as a Discovery of features and screens. Read the Manual when you get stuck. In about 3 hours the batteries were dead. I then broke out the NiHD's. The loss of the Proprietary battery pack is a real bummer! The Triton now takes individual AA cells again, and NO Charging circuit in the unit! This means your back to carrying Rechargeable again. The unit behaves like the SporTrak Color in this respect. It will use power from the cable when connected in USB mode or in a cradle with a Cig lighter cable, and saves batteries. Some do like the ability to use the Recharable AA's so this Unit is for you in that respect. I switched between some of the screens and landed on the Satellite screen, which was already acquiring Sats. I backed up a couple of screens to the Compass, and figured out how to calibrate it in a few minutes. This was a bit clunky, and the firmware did a Dr Watson like crash, and I had to power off and power back on using the power switch. Where did the leveling bubble go??? Sure miss that, how do I know my surface is level? Naa, I field hand rotate them and works fine! Who cares if it is level! Yes it matters! No biggy at this point, I went right back to the calibration. It is a bit harder than the X600, but easier than the SporTrak Color which was quite temperamental. Ok, got the Compass calibrated, and did my compass rose in my backyard checking various predetermined land marks and checked my placement with the North star. So this test passed, and seemed ok. I then moved on to some of the basic configuration like the mapping and coordinate system. Well after reading the manual, and playing with the settings, I was freaking out as I could not get the unit to do (DEG MM.MMM). This is the Geocaching standard! YikeS! So, I set aside the coordinate thing for a bit and looked over the create waypoints, and Geocaches. I then soon realized, this unit is not usable out of the box. Hmm, well, I didn't let that stop me, so I then started to get all my software together, hunkered down for an in depth Tech troubleshooting session. I noted a file transfer mode on the connectivity section, and could not get the O/S to discover the hardware. So I was not sure what to expect yet, since I could not talk to the Unit. I didn't bother with VantagePoint on the Disk that came with the Unit, I downloaded the latest from Magellangps.com. This was common in the forums. Installed VantagePoint and got the Unit talking right away. VantagePoint holds all the communications Drivers for the Unit. And it connected right away. So now I was connected to the Unit, and it was reporting the 1.11 version of firmware installed. I discovered the update button on the tool bar and upgraded the Firmware in the Unit. Restarted the Unit, and the look and feel of certain sections have changed, and things seem to be faster. The file transfer function was eliminated, which means to me, that the direct access to structured file systems is gone. At least for now. Ok, that just means they decided to run a flat file system on the SD card blind. BTW, which I am using a SanDisk 4Gig in this unit. After running the upgrade, the size reported by the Unit is still 878M Initial Memory size of the SD card. This problem existed before the firmware upgrade to 1.14 and Still exists. So this is Bug #1. Later, I examined the memory detail after loading several Maps, Waypoints and it says I have nothing installed, but the memory free had dropped. Ok, back to the coordinates system! Thank goodness for this Upgrade as it fixed the coordinate system problems I had. I am now running WGS84 with lat/long set to accuracy of (Deg MM.MMM). So far so good. Now I was really ready to test the accuracy of the Unit. I went out back and snapped a couple of coordinates in a relatively short amount of time. Setting from "current location" and from a "point on Map" are quick and painless. The stories of marking a new point and modifying it with the input interface in dozens of taps easy when modifying a whole waypoint are true. The interface does work though. This is where the touch screen works well with data Entry and the tiny stylus that comes with the Unit. In fact, you get a little five pack of styli in the box! As others have said in the posts, the accuracy is Great! I was within 3-6 feet of each "Created Waypoint" They no longer call it "Marking", but traditionally that is what it is. I even checked one of my own caches I had set a couple of years ago down the street. It was within 15 feet of the posted coordinates. I even snapped a new waypoint and set a new Point-to-Point route to the new waypoint and was dead on at the cache, and only drifted around 3 feet!! Next I created a Geocache. Now that is cool! I will get back to that in a bit later. Next, I wanted to see what VantagePoint did on importing GPX files full of Geocaches. Let me just Say Johnny Vegas's concern about the hierarchical file system missing are founded. You can no longer access the SD cards like a USB thumb Drive. VantagePoint is the only way to get stuff on and off the Unit. I Played half the night trying to see what the limitations are with the Goecache Management, and it needs a lot of work. Maggie, Neat who ever coined the term, Magellan, needs to learn a few tricks that Clyde has learned with GSAK. The performance is very slow, and there is no sense of center, and shows by distance makes no sense. I agree with one post, why deal with the logs if you are not going to even deal with the descriptions. The linkage back to GC.com is sufficient for me. That would be a Great feature, to have the Descriptions, but the info level is fine for geocaching in my opinion. I just want to be able to mark them found and export that back to GSAK where there are Macros to semi-automate the online experience. There appears to be a serious limitation in the number of Geocaches you can put into VantagePoint. The largest file it can process I have discovered so far is 1000. But any subsequent loads for more, error out. I will need to test the limit later. I at one time had 25,000 Geocaches in GSAK and those all fit on My Palm. There is enough memory in the unit and on the SD card to do wonders! So, Lets talk about the Map monument and How the map loading works. I have Mapsend Direct Route V2.00 I have had since I had my SporTrak Color and also used it on My eXplorist 600. The process is different for creating the Maps for the X600 than the SporTrak Color, and the Triton is the same in this respect as the X600. The Serial Numbering scheme and how you serialize the Maps when creating regions is the same as the X600. I use the Write to Disk method. The V2.00 product allows you to mate up with 3 Units. I used one mating on the Triton 2000 with no problem! I grabbed a Region with Californian And Nevada, Arizona. Both States in full on one region is about an 83Meg Map. I then moved the Map to the VantagePoint working Directory and added the Map into VantagePoint, and it Popped a message, Map Authorized, and Initialized! This was Great! I then pushed the map to the Triton 2000 in about 15 minutes. After it loaded, I shutdown VantagePoint to disconnect and loaded the Map. Wooo Hooo! This was Great! I now have a Detailed map, and it was performing very well! Within a couple of seconds switching between screens as if it didn't really notice the size of the Detailed Map. So far so good. I decided to test the Routing functions I fiddled around and poked through the screens, and low and behold, I can't figure out how to do a Street Route. Every time I set a Waypoint or Geocache, it only ever goes into point to point mode. So Bug #2. All Routing functions are none existent. NOOOO! This can't be. How am I to Route to Geocaches? This is a SHOW STOPPER! Well, I decided to keep going and see where the Geocache management lead. I read out on the Tritonforum.com site, and found some of the limitations that had floated around, and the Triton 2000 is suppose to hold 2000 Geocaches! That is a lot! I didn't know this limit when I tested the Geocache portion, as I only put in 500 and it took them! Well, with the trouble I am having with the limits in VantagePoint, I can't seem to get 2000 on the Unit. The Forums suggested a limit of 300 for now, but I did get 500 on the Unit. It just was not stable after that. It seems to be running ok with 100 at the moment. This was carved from another Post by gulo, on tritonforum.com. There are certain limits of how many user objects can be uploaded on the device: Triton 200/300: 500 WPT, 500 GC, 20 Routes/25 points each. Triton 400/500: 1000 WPT, 1000 GC, 40 Routes/25 points each. Triton 1500/2000: 2000 WPT, 2000 GC, 40 Routes/50 points each But now for the Deal Breaker for most of you out there. The Paperless aspects for the Geocaches is None existent! No way to mark them found! You can edit the Icon, waypoint name, lat/long, difficulty in whole unit steps only, (The X600 shows them in half steps), Hint and that is it. You can add and delete them, but you can't mark them as found. Cachemate in a Palm is still your best friend. The names are also broken on the maps. I have names set to on for Geocaches in the detailed map settings, but the hover is the only thing that works. This is a cool feature of the touch screen. You touch a cache or scroll and hover, and it pops the whole name in a shadow. This is also the same behavior for all POI's. Show waypoint names seems to work ok, in Hiking profile where I have that set. There is a Geocache Icon setting for unfound/All/Off in the Map settings, which suggests I can make them Found, so maybe I overlooked the function in the Manual, which I referred to quite a bit after my initial out of box experience. The Unit having 500 Geocaches in it became unstable, and the detailed map page was taking 10-15 seconds to change to the Map screen and I can consistently crash the unit pressing and holding the "Page Go to" button, so I think it is trying to render all the geocaching Icons is why the slow screen transition to and from the map page. Once I reduced the amount to 100, the Unit seemed to work without any problems, and I had read one post that indicated stability up to 300 Geocaches. The Unit needs to be able to manage a lot to be a viable unit. The Search functions for both Geocaches and waypoints are broken. Major Bug #3! The Nearest function is completely broken, as some have said. Clearly the orientation on the map is correct, but the list is sorting on stuff miles away. The name sort is the only one that works. Getting the Geocaches on and off the unit in mass is very difficult and the synch function took hours to resynch several hundred caches off the unit, which is the only effective way to do it. There is a mass delete function in VantagePoint but not on the unit. Tracks. Hmm,, There was some discussion I saw on this too, and the Tracks Interface Must be broken. I would not believe that it didn't work just like the other structures for Caches, Waypoints and Routes. You can save the current track with a filename, but the filenames are not present in the display. VantagePoint sees them, and the names of them. You can synch them and delete them from VantagePoint, but have no control at the Unit. The tracks once saved, can be shared. I will try and get a Nemesis hike converted and posted for a Demo. That is how they seem to appear at this time. So you build a trail and view it as a Track. These are colored blue. Purple is the point to point line color and yellow is the deviation color. Track is orange. I did a trip to work and back with it just watching the track performance, and it stopped tracking after a while. I think they got the limit all wrong?, and I remember the X600 had 2000 points per track, and it just wrapped after the 2000. This track should be way less than 2000 points for just 50 miles of travel. I can go from here in the North Bay in California, to San Luis Obispo, and the X600 would hold the whole track. Ooops, I reset the unit again after another lockup, and now the track is showing again the whole way. Well, looks like there are more then just Track Management problems, as the tracking itself looks buggy. VantagePoint could use some features too in the management of caches going on the Unit. They have a clunky single checkbox selection system per cache. There needs to be a "Select all" "Unselect all" option at a minimum. Who wants to go through 2000 caches selecting and deselecting to get the ones you want? This is where the X600 and the individual Geocache files has a huge advantage. I am attempting the Max load now. I exported 2000 unfound caches into a gpx file, and by my calculations, it will take VantagePoint alone 2.2 hours to complete. I hope they go in the unit faster than that. I would never get to go Caching. Arg! Well, it didn't work as I had said earlier. Well, so far battery life is not that great. I can get about 6 hours, with the backlight set to low, turning off the backlight while not using the Unit. It could be my NiHD's are old. I heard there are some new L-ion AA batteries on the market, and I hear they have some good capacity. So that may be the ticket for long battery life. Be prepared on a 10-12 hour hike to bring a couple of spare sets. Another quirky comparison is when a X600 is cradled with power, the unit will stay bright on backlight until you select the brightness level. If not cradled, it defaults to the 30 second timer I had set in the Unit. The way the Triton behaves at this point is different. I also have the backlight to auto turn off after 30 seconds, and when the Unit is first initialized, it turns off the backlight after 30 seconds of idle time. But if you touch or change the brightness, the default 30 second timer when running on batteries no longer shuts off the backlight after 30 seconds. It stays at the level you set it until next Unit initialization time. Well, the bottom line is the Unit has lots of potential, and I hope Magellan listens to us beta testers, that they have some work to do, and that these units could really rock! lets hope they do the right thing. BTW, I also loaded the Yosemite free Topo NG map that came on the CD with the Unit. It was self upgrading and was able to talk to the Unit Directly. Which means they have an Interface Specification available, so Clyde from GSAK can have a way to talk to the Units some day. All the posts about the maps not being Free are true. You have to have the Activated CD's to get the maps. But they work, and look nice! Their is only support for level 4 and Level 5 detail at this time. In the mean time, I will open some online support requests to get some feedback from Magellan. I am also hoping others will read my post, and see there is hope, but more work to be done. If anybody had direct access to any of the Magellan Reps, have them read my post. I am also more then willing to be a beta tester or try anything cachers want me to look at. I know this will generate some questions too. So lets hear from you! Have a Great day! MR

The OP is clearly asking about the "unofficial GeoTour" meaning of "GeoTrail," so let's talk about that.

I am having the same issues as the ones posted above. I have contacted Groundspeak and have received the same answer back as the others. I have contacted my internet provider and also contacted my carrier AT&T which I spent nearly an hour on the phone with. The one I was talking to even went higher up the food chain to no advail. They said the only way they could really tell why i am not receiving my text notifications would be to follow a text from start to finish but I don’t have a clue how to give them an origin for a text that I am no longer getting. It seems like they need to talk to someone at Groundspeak to follow the transaction from start to finish. If you will furnish me that number I would be glad to contact AT&T and give it to them.

I've got a great idea - Let's put out a new category in peer review on a US holiday weekend so that hardly any US waymarkers can look at it! Nice. It's also another great idea to never have had it discussed in the forums. You aren't really requiring photos - you're saying screengrabs are okay. This is a violation of Groundspeak terms of service if those "screengrabs" happen to belong to someone else on another platform like Facebook, Twitter, etc., where the original photographer and the platform hold a copyright. You have to agree to terms of service for each waymark you post and violating that terms of service can get the waymarker who "screengrabs" the picture of the rooftop garden in trouble with Groundspeak and with the copyright holder. Groundspeak Terms of Service You agree not to: "viii - Upload, post, transmit, or otherwise distribute any content that infringes any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other intellectual property, or proprietary rights of any person, including without limitation under any privacy or publicity rights. xi - Violate any applicable local, state, national, or international law." How are people supposed to visit these, especially if they are private rooftop gardens? There is no mention of this in the writeup? What kind of long description are you requiring? Where does one get the coordinates for the garden, especially for a private one that they cannot physically visit, but can only take a picture from afar? What about trespassing and voyeur laws, especially for these private gardens where you would be taking photo from locations outside the garden? If you are shooting from another location, you could be violating privacy laws, which I know for a fact a very strict in California and are very strict in Europe. With that said, that would be a violation of, again, Terms of Service 11. You also speak of playgrounds - why both? Again, people who own these are going to have SERIOUS issues of people taking long range photos of their kids on a private playground. This category isn't well thought-out; it is not well written-out; and frankly, and it definitely has the possibility of being downright illegal. This is why you should always bring these new category ideas to the Forums first. Talk to me on the above, clear up the concerns. There is a hole where this category might fill, possibly, but how can you document these without violating the owners privacy and, just as importantly, how could someone visit these waymarks? I have published the above as my response in peer review.

I created a tour guide type Wherigo like this and ran into a major problem. If using the same character but are moving them in each zone you will have to activate or deactivate the command "talk" for each zone depending on where the character is. Doing this, you will need to create a new "talk" command for each zone. In urwigo This gets confusing because you will have multiples of the same command. I believe there is a limit on the number of commands you can give a character or item at 6. If you use more there will be problems with the player. There's a variety of work arounds. One possibility would be to simply show a message On proximity or on enter in each zone and the message could have an image of that character. This makes it appear like you are interacting with that character. The other option is create one talk command but change the message or input based upon a variable for that zone. I like the idea of having different characters in each zone too.

Here's the script I'd suggest. You'll need to break it up into different places in your code: --Put this line at the top of your cartridge require "math" --Put these into your author script section: images = {} talk = {} monk = 0 function cartMonkey:OnStart() --You need to rename this based on the name of your cartridge images={zmediapuzzle_msg, zmediapuzzle_msg, zmediagot_monkey, zmediapuzzle_msg, zmediapuzzle_msg} talk={"Go and Shake again.", "Great no Monkey!", "You just got a Monkey.", "Shake again.", "try again."} end function RandomMonkey() monk = monk +1 local r=math.random(table.getn(images)) Wherigo.MessageBox{Text=talk[r] .. " " .. monk, Media=images[r]} end As long as your code is in the author script section, Groundspeak's Builder application will not touch it. As for the above code, the cartridge's OnStart function will populate your images and talk arrays. I wasn't so sure your message's syntax was correct, so I revised that. Whenever you need to roll the proverbial dice and check for a monkey, you can call the RandomMonkey() function. I'm wondering if you got an error with your scripts because you didn't have any of that inside a function block. Also, here's a valuable tip (and an extreme word of caution): When I create code-heavy cartridges and need to debug them, I use the print() statement. This tells me what the variable values are and what my code is doing up to when it errors. Thus, you could use print() the following way: function RandomMonkey() print("RandomMonkey called") monk = monk +1 print("Number of monkeys: " .. monk) local r=math.random(table.getn(images)) print("Random number chosen: " .. r) Wherigo.MessageBox{Text=talk[r] .. " " .. monk, Media=images[r]} print("Message shown; exiting RandomMonkey") end Everything that goes through a print() call will show up on the second tab in the emulator. Thus, if your cartridge crashes, you'll know what all the values were up to that point--and where it crashed, if you use the print() statements correctly. Very, very helpful for the cartridges I like building. Remember I said there was a word of extreme caution? Well, as far as I can tell, the print() statement is only supported in the emulator, (probably) the PDA player (does anyone use that these days?), and the Garmin Colorado. What you print() should and will, of course, be ignored in the Players. However, some Players do not handle the print() statement. I know for a fact the Garmin Oregon will power off if it encounters one and the last version of PiGo will throw a message to the player, saying the function is not supported. (Later, PiGo should ignore this.) Thus, when you finish your testing, I strongly recommend you comment out (remember: lua doesn't take well to using apostrophes in comments) or remove all print() statements.

Hi you guys I am a long time geocacher who lost touch when I moved to Maui, its just not happening a lot here. Beautiful, but not a lot of caching. OK so I have two Garmin Hcx Etrex. I know, its been a moment. I need to buy a new unit, and am eyeing the link below. Is this my best bet right now? I have bad eyes, so will this be a step up? And oh, I am not a touchscreen fan. Any feedback welcome. And also, new friends Please? I am taking tomorrow off so I can sit online and make friends and talk story and rekindle my passion for geocaching. I am ready to purchase tonight, so talk to me.... Mods, if in the wrong place, please let me know <3 Garmin GPSMAP 64st, TOPO U.S. 100K with High-Sensitivity GPS and GLONASS Receiver

I've read a couple threads about Covid-19 and caching, and it got me to thinking: With all of this talk of social distancing and PPE, would there be a legitimate case for cachers to create virtual caches? What are your thoughts?

I have no interest in souvenirs. For challenge caches that are challenging, in particular, when I meet the challenge, I want to log the find so I can talk about the challenge and what it meant to me for the same reason I want to log cache finds and talk about them. I'm not doing it for trophies. Yeah - I'd rather have challenge caches continue as-is than to see them completely banned and replaced by souvenirs. The post-moratorium rules have eliminated some challenge types that I enjoyed, but at least the pre-moratorium ones have been allowed to continue and there is some potential for new challenge caches that might be interesting, if a CO can come up with a good idea that works within the current guidelines. I wouldn't be opposed to simple souvenirs, like Jasmer or Fizzy or calendar, but I wouldn't want to see GS resources spent on something that is currently accomplished by BadgeGen. I wouldn't be surprised if GS ends up getting complaints from cachers about how a particular 'accomplishment' doesn't have a souvenir. "There is a souvenir for having 2000 and 3000 finds, but how about a souvenir for having 2500" or "There is a souvenir for completing a Fizzy grid, but how about a souvenir for completing half of a Fizzy grid"... There have already been complaints about how some countries don't yet have souvenirs, so I don't see how 'accomplishment' souvenirs would be an attractive use of time.

That's a good division that covers most everything, although one of the problems I have with GS's attitude towards challenges is that in preventing challenges, they rule out everything except accomplishments, so a CO can't come up with a new idea that isn't really either. I have no interest in souvenirs. For challenge caches that are challenging, in particular, when I meet the challenge, I want to log the find so I can talk about the challenge and what it meant to me for the same reason I want to log cache finds and talk about them. I'm not doing it for trophies.

A false-positive test will do that. It happens. They don't talk about it.

What's dangerous for one child isn't necessarily dangerous for another child. Children learn from parents, peers, teachers, friends about what constitutes safe actions vs what constitutes unsafe actions and they learn those things at different ages. They don't learn it from osmosis, so your point about a child's age not mattering is also not a valid point. Let's use your railroad example. Let's say the child caching with you is 15. By this time, there's a strong likelihood that they realize trains will either severely injure you or kill you if you get too close to them due to their weight, being told by parents and peers, seeing movies/videos, etc... Now let's look at the 3 year old. Their exposure to trains is probably limited to Thomas the Train or The Little Engine That Could. They see familiar faces and trains that talk, are friendly, and are things that have feelings and the ability to do things that people do. They're not things to be cautious about because they haven't learned that yet. They see them as things that they can interact with. The "choo choo" is a friend, not a 300,000 pound engine that can't stop in time to avoid hitting, maiming, crushing, or killing a toddler that doesn't know any better. The same goes for caches near ponds, which was another point brought up. At some point, the dangers of drowning are learned by a child. Until that point is learned though, we do what we can to keep them safe. We have kiddie pools (where drowning can still occur) that are shallow and make sure to watch them. We provide PFDs. We teach them how to swim. There's no specific age for every child where they learn the potential hazards of water. So let's look at the 15 year old at a cache near a pond. They see water and they realize that it's something that has the potential to kill them but have learned how to swim, whether or not the body of water is safe to swim in, whether or not there could be potentially dangerous things in the pond (alligators, red tides, jellyfish) and what to look for to determine that, and various other things that they may have learned in order to keep themselves safe. A 3 year old sees a body of water and associates it with a kiddie pool, even though it may have current, is considerably deeper than the kiddie pool, and may have dangerous animals in or around it. They haven't learned all the coping mechanisms that the 15 year old has learned so they don't understand the inherent danger like the 15 year old does.

A broken plastic container with a log so wet that it's unsignable, by a cache owner that 9 times out of 10 has left the game.. if that's vandalism, then I contend you just replied just to hear yourself talk. But with 10,000 more posts than me I should have expected that.

You're clearly enthusiastic about geocaching and want to talk about it. That's a great thing. However, you're not an expert at this yet. While it's ok to share your opinions, I think some of your posts come across as the only way to do things, and not all of them have been what I would consider the preferred technique. I've been at this for over 13 years now and am closing in on 10,000 finds. I think it's fair to say we have a decent amount of experience at this point. But at the end of the day, I am just one geocacher, and I don't pretend to have all the answers. I try to share my experience, opinions, recommendations, or my personal approach as only that, and not as the "right answer." I don't always remember to do it that way, but that's how I try to approach things: rather than telling someone what to do, I post about what I have done, or what I have seen, or what I think, or what I'd recommend. All in all, this forum is pretty well behaved compared to some other corners of the internet. And if nothing else, we all have at least one thing in common: we are all interested in geocaching. So don't lose heart. But for now, perhaps consider sitting back and doing some more reading, to inform your opinions and experience some more, and asking questions instead of answering them.

Yes, but if this happens with a GPS, you're in the same boat. Whether GPS or Phone, if you plan to go out of cell range, you must plan ahead. And just to reiterate, only the Oregon 700 and GPSMap66 series have live geocaching abilities, and this must be paired with either a wifi connection or your cell phone's data to work. They do not connect to 4g/5g natively. Otherwise, you must plan ahead with a GPS for all geocaching activities. Pocket queries are your friend either way. No GPS connects to the website anymore. The communicator plugins are no longer supported. A newer model will interface with GPX files and geocaches better than the 60 series. Again, you could go back to the Colorado series (not recommended) or even a 62(s) to get this functionality at an inexpensive price point, though current models have removed the limit on the number of geocaches you can load, making them great for larger trips. I'm not trying to talk you out of a new GPS, just give you an accurate portrayal of their limitations along with the functionality of your phone. I'd hate to see you drop $3-400 and be disappointed. That said, when you work within the limitations, the GPS can be more useful than the phone. But both will get the job done.

In geocache talk it don't mean stolen loot though. Street talk, swag is low grade stuff. Kinda makes sense as to what I find left in geocaches.

Hello, if this is an important place for your children why don't you tell something about it in the listing? Isn't there more to tell as Talk about the place, why is it special to you!? That's some part of the spirit of a geocache and with a good listing (you might even add pictures) you might get better logs than the FTF log.... Without a listing this cache might look as a statistics point ("+1") and I think it is much more than that to you. Tell us! You can still edit the listing. Have fun with your cache! Jochen

In my (limited) experience, younger kids are not excited as much by finding something sneaky as by riffling through "treasure." On the other hand, once the local kids find out about the box of toys in the park, it's doomed. Besides counting, you could use colors. Or multiple choice. "If the bench is green, keep going straight ahead. If it is brown, turn left." You could put a simple jigsaw puzzle in the first or second stage. Put the puzzle together to see the coordinates. Or a photo of the final location. Treasure map? Maybe you could make it spy-themed. Talk about spy gadgets and tell them they are looking for something small that is a disguise, and what it can hold (the logbook).

Where did I say they are ONLY in it for that +1? You're reading things that aren't there. I said it makes it more interesting for people wanting a +1 to go caching in groups. Good for you! My experience comes from reading logs and THIS THREAD (and other threads). Yes, people are probably as friendly as anywhere else but as far as geocaching goes we're keeping to ourselves (a plus in these times ). We avoid events and avoid the new caches placed for events. Standing in line to write in the log is not my idea of fun. The few friends we have in geocaching we know a lot longer, they are radio amateurs that we see during club meetings and "on air" but geocaching is almost never a topic of conversation. No problem to have a talk when (and if) we come across other geocachers but we wouldn't call them "friends".

When I log a find on a cache that involves climbing, be it a tree or on rocks, I'm not claiming to have climbed the thing, all I'm claiming is that I signed the cache's logbook. In fact I'll state quite clearly in my log that I used a ladder instead of picking my way up through the branches, or rope, a grabbing tool, an agile friend or a borrowed child. For the latter, there's a cache near here where the CO says on the cache page, "In order to find this cache you will have to be agile and non-claustrophobic. Or just talk one of the youngin's into doing the dirty work for you." After trying to squeeze into the narrow space and fearing I might become stuck, I instead took the CO's advice and used the services of a youngin.

Can you please explain my why if cachers sit in a restaurant and eat pasta and talk about geocaching it is related to geocaching and if cachers meet at an ice skating area and skate and talk about geocaching or go for a hike and talk about geocaching it is not related to geocaching? I just do not get it. round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and we go

So... just host a hike and invite geocachers directly without making it an event. That's exactly what the ice skating event will end up. gc.com will lose however and those who do not belong to cliques and are not local to the event area. I thought that there should be better ways, but apparently they are not and Groundspeak does not seem to have interest to keep such events on their site. Why would Groundspeak be interested in hosting things entirely unrelated to geocaching? As far as I am aware, they are not out to compete with Meetup.com. How is it a loss? Can you please explain my why if cachers sit in a restaurant and eat pasta and talk about geocaching it is related to geocaching and if cachers meet at an ice skating area and skate and talk about geocaching or go for a hike and talk about geocaching it is not related to geocaching? I just do not get it. Nobody said those things weren't about geocaching. Your ideal event, evidently, is not about geocaching. You just want to use the geocaching site as a platform to bring people to something that has nothing to do with geocaching, and that's an entirely separate issue.

So... just host a hike and invite geocachers directly without making it an event. That's exactly what the ice skating event will end up. gc.com will lose however and those who do not belong to cliques and are not local to the event area. I thought that there should be better ways, but apparently they are not and Groundspeak does not seem to have interest to keep such events on their site. Why would Groundspeak be interested in hosting things entirely unrelated to geocaching? As far as I am aware, they are not out to compete with Meetup.com. How is it a loss? Can you please explain my why if cachers sit in a restaurant and eat pasta and talk about geocaching it is related to geocaching and if cachers meet at an ice skating area and skate and talk about geocaching or go for a hike and talk about geocaching it is not related to geocaching? I just do not get it.

Congratulations to Alfouine for determining the extraction point of CONTROL's top agents. Your hard work is much appreciated. You have been declared CONTROL's #4 Agent! The Chief would like to again thank Agent 72, CONTROL's #3 Agent for all his work in decoding the secret message from Max and 99. Outstanding job! For everyone else, here is the solution: Max and 99's profile; News Articles Posted. Use first letter of waymark title. Code uses what3words (geocaching toolbox can help) This is a secret message from CONTROL's top agents Max and Ninety Nine. KAOS is close. Tell the Chief we need extraction from Frogs Brain Water. End of message. Toyota accidentally hits bridal shop - OKC, OK Hearing aid company closes, owing customers money - OKC, OK In-crisis youth have safe place to ask for help with community partners - OKC, OK Seniors served by Mobile Meals - Edmond, OK In-and-Out Burger receives Excellent rating from health inspection - Tucson, AZ State google design finalist at Carl Albert Middle School - MWC, OK Angry Crab has new owner - Tucson, AZ Sheriff announces Logan County a 2nd Amendment Sanctuary County - Guthrie, OK Emergency childcare offered by YMCA to health care workers and first responders - Edmond, OK Christian Heritage Academy has a superfan! - Del City, OK Relatives fight to bury loved one at Ft. Lowell Cemetery - Tucson, AZ El Reno Cemetery graves damaged - El Reno, OK. 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A lot of talk about what people keep in their bags, but what is your bag? What to you makes a good bag for geocaching gear?