making paper maps from waypoints

[+tomflushing]

Hello to all,

 

Tried a search on this topic and everything about everthing came up but I needed.I need to know how and what products allow me to make maps of my waypoints in order to get from cache to other.I have only limited time to cache and I spend more time trying to join the maps I download to another in order to hit several caches in an area.I can usually accomplish this using the map feature built into the site but when you have 10 or more caches packed into area such as we have in NYC its gets too much for the geocashing website program.I want to know how and what you guys use to make paper maps in order to hit a bunch of caches in one day.I have garmin etrek legend and you(I) can't use it the car for navigation.

[+deafnut]

have you try google earthgeocaching ? it really save my time ...

[+tomflushing]

I have but how to you get a map out the images that you see?

[Neos2]

Even though the Legend won't autoroute, the detailed maps still make it easier to locate caches. You may want to consider adding the maps to the units. The basic maps that are installed don't have much detail. Detailed maps can get you around some obstacles. After we got the autorouting maps, we added Garmin city maps which go on both the computer and the GPS, and you can print them.

 

However, there is a more time-consuming but less expensive way --I used to use the "regular" Geocaching.com Maps to plan our day (before we got autorouting units).

 

I'd find a cluster of caches in one area, choose the one I figured was nearest the center of them all, and go to that cache page.

Choose "Geocaching.com Maps" from the list of online maps there.

When the map pops up, click to recenter it if needed, and zoom in as far as I could (and still have all the caches in the view).

Click on "Identify caches"

Now you have a list of all the caches and a map of the caches --numbered to match the list.

 

Figure out a basic path to each of the caches, and an order that would make sense to do them in. Watch for caches in the same park, one-way streets, dead-end streets, etc. You may have to zoom in or out on that map (or even the cache page maps or google maps) to figure out enough detail for some of the caches.

 

I copied the list of caches into my word processing program, made the font small so they'd fit on one page (took some deleting usually, too), and had a bit of room left over to jot down notes. I'd add notes about possible streets with parking, side streets and cross streets to watch for, any landmarks I knew were there from the maps (churches, businesses)--anything to make the travel to the cache easier.

 

I usually didn't try to get every little detail because I did have the basic map on the GPS, but I did try to get a rough idea. Zooming in on the maps gives you more street names to work with. Even though I used a PDA for cache information, I still printed out the one big map, and the list of caches for routing help. If one or two caches looked very tricky to get to, I'd print off additional maps to them in greater detail. Next to the number of the cache on my list, I'd write in letters (a,b,c,d, etc) to remind me which order looked best in theory on the online map.

 

Since the rough location of the caches does show up on the GPS with the basic maps, you could try getting a detailed city map and using that to navigate among the caches without all the print fuss. You will still want to have a basic idea of where the caches you will be doing are located, because just hitting "nearest caches" on the unit will almost always show you multiple caches in four different directions. As you already know, if you head east to the nearest cache there may be one cache, but if you had gone west there may have been eight caches. That's why I made the overview map and preplanned.

 

I never found a way to print anything but a blank map off google maps, so if I needed photo-type maps, I used the terraserver maps here --plug in the cords and zoom in as desired.

 

I have to admit that it's all much easier now with the detailed maps and the autorouting units. But we found our first 300 caches or so without them.

[+imajeep]

I have but how to you get a map out the images that you see?

 

Google Earth is definitely a good way to go. I use it for overviews of caching locales. It doesn't do a pure map view, but if you enable 'Roads' in the Layers pane, it will overlay a street map onto the image. You can save the image to a JPG file by selecting 'Save Image' from the file menu. Then you can print that using your favorite image viewing program. Or, you can select 'Print' from the file menu and specify 'Graphic image of 3-D view'.

[+Team Cotati]

Get microsoft streets and trips. pq and load caches into gsak. create export in ms-s&t format. import the file into s&t. nice maps with your caches clearly displayed.

[+michigansnorkelers]

I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for, but since you're a premium member you have access to bookmarks and Pocket Queries.

 

You could create a PQ of the area you wish to cache. Then, go to your PQ page and click on the map icon in front of that PQ. The Google map will appear, showing ONLY the caches in that PQ. The map detail will depend on how dispersed the caches are. If close enough together, you'll see the street names. Zoomed out, you'll see streets without names.

 

Here is an example in an area you cached recently.

 

 

 

Note: If you want, you could be even more selective by putting SPECIFIC caches into a BOOKMARK, then running a PQ of that bookmark.

 

Edited August 12, 2007 by michigansnorkeler

[+tomflushing]

Thanks for all the great resposes.

 

Neos2 -I am still learning goggle earth

 

Team Cotati-GSaK I tried trial version and it was not for me but I think I'm going to give it another shot.

 

Michingansnorkler-I use what you posted but not with pq and bookmarking .I have found that for me when I try loading caches the system if over whelmed by the amount of caches in my area but I'm going to try it with what you have suggested.

[+tomflushing]

Thanks for all the responses _ I found the solution to my problem -don't use AOL.Using the map features included with a premium membership and IE ,I was able to get what I need.AOL sucks and I don't why I'm still using it.