Really Really New To This

[+paixful]

I am sure that all of these questions have been asked before but I'm too excited to get going to spend days finding the answers!

 

I just got a GPS (Magellan Explorist 210) last week for my birthday. I always wanted to try geocaching and am now very excited to do it.

 

I was playing with my GPS last night and figured out how to download a geocache and so tonight I went hunting and had a blast!!

 

I came home and was all excited to do more so I tried to upload 3 at once (like as one file, I think) but now I can't see them as 3 seperate things on my GPS. Should I only upload one at a time??

 

Also can i directly upload to my GPS or do I have to go through software like the Magellan Geocache Manager that came with the GPS??

 

Also, do you keep track of what caches you've found (besides logging it at the website)?

 

Finally, what websites are there to get the coordinates for caches (I'm in Canada)??

 

Thanks for anyone who can help me

 

Lori

[+wavector]

Hello paixful

Welcome to the world of geocaching.

You can download multiple geocaches to your Explorist and the easiest way to do this is to use your Magellan Geocache Manager. The Magellan software and the Explorist can be a bit quirky and they do provide a bit of a learning curve but the Explorist is an excellent unit. The Explorist 210 uses a USB interface so you may have to set the USB port to NMEA to connect your Magellan Explorist when using other software, the NMEA setting will make your Magellan appear as a COM4 device instead of a USB device, you can make your Magellan work with either setting. You can load caches individually or as a group and then use the GOTO feature, some people prefer to see the caches on the screen and you can choose what is visible using the unit's software. It is possible to load geocaches as POI's as well.

You can only obtain GPX files by becoming a Premium Member and in the beginning you can get by easily using the free loc files which you get by clicking on each cache and selecting it for download.

If you become a Premium Member then you can obtain a GPX file with all your Finds and then track everything in a program like GSAK (Geocaching Swiss Army Knife) but most people choose to let the website do the tracking. A red check mark will appear beside each cache you have found when you select the caches nearest my home coordinates link. Make sure you fill out an approximate but accurate home coordinate on the geocaching.com site.

www.geocaching.com is the main listing service for geocaches in the world and the number is nearing 300,000. I think all the caches in Alberta are GC caches,other listing services are navicache and terracaching.

There are quite a few active geocachers in Lethbridge, you can get to the local forums by using this link http://www.geocachingalbertasouth.com and there is a front page link to the Lethbridge Area forums maintained by GarAr. The website also contains a bit of information about Alberta South caches and some general stuff. I just found Points of Interest 3 a short while ago, it is a neat location for sure.

I hope that helps paixful

[+Geek&Gopher]

Welcome Aboard!

 

Once you find your first cache you won't want to stop.

 

I'm a 1 week old newbie and loving it. Great way to spend time in the outdoors

which I love to do anyway.

[+mikeylou]

Wow. I think I know you Paixful...

 

[isn't it great when you use the same handle online everywhere? How's your Jinglebaby?]

 

I know absolutely nothing about Magellans (I have an eTrex). I use GSAK and Pocket Queries (premium member). The PQs are of caches around certain areas (home, my parents, etc). I get them zipped up and then I load them into GSAK. GSAK will also show me which caches I've found. Then I filter GSAK by location/terrain/whatever and "send" those waypoints to my eTrex using GSAK. I also convert my list to a pdb file and load it into my PDA.

 

Have fun =)