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Giving Parking Coordinates


bikinibottomfeeders

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I am fairly new to caching but have come across a few caches that give you the parking cords in the middle of their 10pg. description of the cache. Seeing as how I don't have a palm pilot to carry around with me and look at every cache page I have run into a couple that I couldn't do. My suggestion is that Groundspeak should make an option available that would allow a cache owner to have two waypoints for one cache. The first one would be the parking coords and the second would be for the cache. As long as sadistic people didn't abuse this it might help us cachers that don't have a palm pilot and don't want to print off every cache.

 

Sorry if this has already been addressed but I don't have time to sit and look through every posting...if I did I wouldn't be able to go caching.

 

Thanx,

Bikini Bottom Feeders

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The ability to have a supplemental GPX file on a cache page has been mentioned by Jeremy previously as a "nice to have" website enhancement, so watch for it to bubble up on the priority list someday. The file could contain parking coordinates, intermediate waypoints for a multicache, points of interest like a scenic overlook along the way, etc.

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Would definitely be nice for cases where the parking isn't meant to be part of the challenge (and hence would have to make it obvious that it was entirely optional for you to input parking coordinates). The main time I like parking coordinates is where you in fact have to park some distance away (like 1+km).

That being said, it would be nice if whatever implementation of it was something that a program like GSAK or whatever could readily deal with in terms of extra coordinates associated with the same entry.

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There could be additional waypoints in the gpx file. Not just for parking but for trail heads or other points of interest, too. They could be listed on the cache page, too. E.g. the cache has a waypoint name GC1234 and there would be additional waypoints with names like GC1234+parking, GC1234+trailhead, etc.

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I am fairly new to caching but have come across a few caches that give you the parking cords in the middle of their 10pg. description of the cache. Seeing as how I don't have a palm pilot to carry around with me and look at every cache page I have run into a couple that I couldn't do. My suggestion is that Groundspeak should make an option available that would allow a cache owner to have two waypoints for one cache. The first one would be the parking coords and the second would be for the cache. As long as sadistic people didn't abuse this it might help us cachers that don't have a palm pilot and don't want to print off every cache.

 

Sorry if this has already been addressed but I don't have time to sit and look through every posting...if I did I wouldn't be able to go caching.

 

Thanx,

Bikini Bottom Feeders

In my opinion finding where to park is part of the challenge of Geocaching. On the other hand, parking coords can be helpful in situations where the description makes it apparent that parking options may not be obvious. If I intend on using parking coords I mark them on my GPS as a new waypoint before I leave home. Once on the hunt I do a GO TO to the parking coordinates first and from there on to the cache. For me, doing the preliminaries prior to leaving on a caching spree is all part of the fun!

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It would be nice to give multiple coordinates for every cache, and not just for parking. I have a cache which some people have not been able to find how to get to - and it is at the parking coordinates ;-) I placed it because I could see a mysterious and rarely used on-ramp to the expressway (with no corresponding exit ramp), and I went on a hunt myself to find out how to use that ramp. Anyway, I guess my point is that sometimes you might want to give additional coordinates of anything and sometimes you might not, but it's up to the hider.

 

For instance, there are some star-topology multi-caches where all the coordinates are given in the page and the results of the "first" stages are used to find a later stage. Right now, I use a variant on Markwell's suggestion - in GSAK I create GCXXXXX-1, GCXXXXX-2 for a star topology multi-cache I am doing, because all the individual stages are known from the outset.

 

In fact, it would probably also be useful for hiders and approvers for the hiders to be able to enter additional coordinates which are ONLY visible by the hider and approver. This might help approvers more easily check a stage of a cache against existing caches to follow the cache density guidelines. The hider might also want to hide them and use them as hints.

 

How all these are linked to a cache, I don't know - presumably the GPX schema/DTD can be extended to allow a collection of coordinates. Of course, some kind of support in GSAK would be a must.

 

So, I think you need a waypoint (this is probably what links them), a description of what the point is for, and whether it is fully public, initially hidden, or fully private.

 

I would think that the choice of waypoint would be important for people who have some limitations in their GPSrs - are a lot of people limited to 6 characters?

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