How to pocket query for a big Vacation?

[+bobkeenan]

I am going to Norway for about a month this summer for vacation.... Yea. And I am going to geocache till I drop.

 

I would love to download a set of pocket queries for the whole country because I am not sure where I will be during that month.

 

Are there any easy ways, using pocket queries to get all of those caches.

 

Right now I am selecting the country and working my way though date time segments at 500 caches per date span. But it is a little tedious.

 

Any Ideas?

[+JohnnyVegas]

I am going to Norway for about a month this summer for vacation.... Yea. And I am going to geocache till I drop.

 

I would love to download a set of pocket queries for the whole country because I am not sure where I will be during that month.

 

Are there any easy ways, using pocket queries to get all of those caches.

 

Right now I am selecting the country and working my way though date time segments at 500 caches per date span. But it is a little tedious.

 

Any Ideas?

You could do several pocket PQ centered in differant areas, then as you got to that area activate the PQ

[+JohnTee]

 

Right now I am selecting the country and working my way though date time segments at 500 caches per date span. But it is a little tedious.

 

Any Ideas?

 

I think you've got about the only 'best' way to do it. If you knew exactly where you were driving, you could set up routes and geocaches within 'x' miles of a route. Otherwise, if you want everything, that's probably it. How many caches in Norway, anyway? Oh! 4947 at the moment! That's ten PQ's if you want everything. I see your dilemma. Good luck!

 

Cache On!

 

JohnTee

[+DavidMac]

Ten PQs isn't really too overwhelming. If you REALLY want that many, there's no reason why you couldn't set up 10 queries, then run 5 each over two days. But, being more realistic, if you filtered out the types of caches that you know you won't be interested in, (puzzles, multis, difficulty >4, etc), then exclude areas that you know you won't be visiting, you could probably get all the data you need to fit into 5 queries.

 

Over a month, though, your pocket query data is likely to get outdated very quickly. I would recommend using 10 queries for advance planning, then grabbing the most updated information as you go. Internet access isn't too hard to come by anymore. Will you be carrying a laptop with you? 30 minutes in an internet cafe/wifi hotspot, and you should be able to make 3-4 queries on the fly to cover the area you'll be visiting over the next few days.

[+bobkeenan]

Thanks for the ideas.

 

That is what I will do. I will have a laptop to update stuff. And 10 queries is not that big a deal.

 

I have done the routing and the search in certain areas but in the past I sometimes find myself outside of my GSAK database and want to cache but can't.

 

I was just hoping that there was some pocket query setting that I was missing where I could, simply, get the whole country in a series of queries but without doing each one... one by one.

[+dew cache]

I am having the same problem I am going to Las Vegas and when I do a search of only Las Vegas I get 1895 Active caches well that is 4 queries assuming I knew where to do the 4 and that is not including North Las Vegas or Pahrump which I think is south where we might go. I am taking my laptop loaded with the queries loaded in it I just hope I can come up with the full set. My GPS is going to be loaded with about 500 caches along the route from Amarillo to Las Vegas when I leave home.

[+bobkeenan]

I am having the same problem I am going to Las Vegas and when I do a search of only Las Vegas I get 1895 Active caches well that is 4 queries assuming I knew where to do the 4 and that is not including North Las Vegas or Pahrump which I think is south where we might go. I am taking my laptop loaded with the queries loaded in it I just hope I can come up with the full set. My GPS is going to be loaded with about 500 caches along the route from Amarillo to Las Vegas when I leave home.

 

Taking the advice that I got. I selected all of Norway. I then ran previews of all of the caches from Jan 1998 till some date in 200X until I got to the 500 limit. Then I ran another preview from the last date to another date closer to present till I got another 500. So on and so forth till I got to the present. I ended up with 10 time spans of 500 caches each. I created a query for each time span and now I have All of Norway.

 

For your trip you could do the route like you suggest and then pick a coordinate or cache in the center of Las Vegas with a radius large enough to cover the whole city. The do the date thing until you have the whole area.

 

There ought to be a way where you can go to a map. Select an area. And get all of the cache info from that are. Wouldn't that be cool

[Keystone]

There ought to be a way where you can go to a map. Select an area. And get all of the cache info from that are. Wouldn't that be cool

You can do this from the Geocaching.com Google maps. Display up to 500 caches on a map centered and zoomed how you like it, then order a query for everything displayed on the map.

 

Here is my method for long caching trips outside my home caching radius, where I keep a set of queries for a 150 mile area around my home that updates weekly.

 

1. Target the areas where I'll be staying for a prolonged period of caching -- whether it's a day around a big Park or two days in a distant urban area. Create pocket queries for a circle around that area of interest, with the radius defined by the area and the amount of time I'll be there. If it takes more than one query, do multiple date-separated queries.

 

2. So, for a roadtrip with stops in five areas, I'll have five big circles full of caches. I then import these into my mapping software. I look for the highway route that connects the first circle to the second. At the far edge of the first circle, I locate a town or placename along that highway. At the closest edge of the second circle, I pick the last town along the highway before I head into the area already covered by pocket queries. I then construct a "caches along a route" query between those two towns. Now the two circles are connected and I have all the caches for X miles on either side of the highway.

 

3. Repeat step 2 to connect all the other circles.

 

4. Update all the queries right before I leave, and while on the road if I have internet access.

[+dew cache]

There ought to be a way where you can go to a map. Select an area. And get all of the cache info from that are. Wouldn't that be cool

You can do this from the Geocaching.com Google maps. Display up to 500 caches on a map centered and zoomed how you like it, then order a query for everything displayed on the map.

 

Here is my method for long caching trips outside my home caching radius, where I keep a set of queries for a 150 mile area around my home that updates weekly.

 

1. Target the areas where I'll be staying for a prolonged period of caching -- whether it's a day around a big Park or two days in a distant urban area. Create pocket queries for a circle around that area of interest, with the radius defined by the area and the amount of time I'll be there. If it takes more than one query, do multiple date-separated queries.

 

2. So, for a roadtrip with stops in five areas, I'll have five big circles full of caches. I then import these into my mapping software. I look for the highway route that connects the first circle to the second. At the far edge of the first circle, I locate a town or placename along that highway. At the closest edge of the second circle, I pick the last town along the highway before I head into the area already covered by pocket queries. I then construct a "caches along a route" query between those two towns. Now the two circles are connected and I have all the caches for X miles on either side of the highway.

 

3. Repeat step 2 to connect all the other circles.

 

4. Update all the queries right before I leave, and while on the road if I have internet access.

 

Well I got it done for Vegas after reading your reply I thought about it for a while and went to the home page and searched for caches and chose Nevada then Las Vegas and made the map small enought to have less than 500 caches of the type I was looking for (Traditional, earthcache, virtual and unknown) that were active and created a pocket query from it.

 

Then I moved the left edge of the map to the right edge (went west) of the page and was able to zoom out to 62 miles and created another query and did that and ended up with 6 queries that are about 125 square miles around Vegas. Now all I have to do is figure out what part of the area I am going to the next day and I can load up the GPS and Palm.

 

I already had the route setup by going to Find Caches Along a Route and found someone eleses route from Amarillo to Flagstaff then another one from Flagstaff to Las Vegas using the route I was going. I will not be stopping between Dallas and Amarillo too early in the trip.

[+sbell111]

... Now all I have to do is figure out what part of the area I am going to the next day and I can load up the GPS and Palm.

I simply load all of the PQs into my GPSr and PDA. That way, I just take a quick look at S&T in the morning to identify the area that I want to his for the day and head out. It's even easier if I'm searching for caches along my route, because I just keep finding the nearest one.

[+dew cache]

... Now all I have to do is figure out what part of the area I am going to the next day and I can load up the GPS and Palm.

I simply load all of the PQs into my GPSr and PDA. That way, I just take a quick look at S&T in the morning to identify the area that I want to his for the day and head out. It's even easier if I'm searching for caches along my route, because I just keep finding the nearest one.

 

My problem is my GPS only holds 1000 waypoints at a time and each of the 6 quries have 500 in them some are dups but still I am sure there are over 1000 total. Las Vegas along has 1894, North Las Vegas has 1888 and Pahrump has 1290. My Palm holds more how many more I don't know maybe I could load them all in it.

 

Now then that I am looking at the quries I am not sure I found all the caches in the area because they all have the max of 500 even though the map said like 316

 

I may have to revisit the procedure

[+sbell111]

... Now all I have to do is figure out what part of the area I am going to the next day and I can load up the GPS and Palm.

I simply load all of the PQs into my GPSr and PDA. That way, I just take a quick look at S&T in the morning to identify the area that I want to his for the day and head out. It's even easier if I'm searching for caches along my route, because I just keep finding the nearest one.

 

My problem is my GPS only holds 1000 waypoints at a time and each of the 6 quries have 500 in them some are dups but still I am sure there are over 1000 total. Las Vegas along has 1894, North Las Vegas has 1888 and Pahrump has 1290. My Palm holds more how many more I don't know maybe I could load them all in it.

 

Now then that I am looking at the quries I am not sure I found all the caches in the area because they all have the max of 500 even though the map said like 316

 

I may have to revisit the procedure

Assuming that you still use a GPSmap 76CSx, you can add the caches as POI and only be lmited by the size of your microSD card.

 

Regarding the duplicates, if you combine the PQs in GSAK, they will go away.

[+dew cache]

Assuming that you still use a GPSmap 76CSx, you can add the caches as POI and only be lmited by the size of your microSD card.

 

Regarding the duplicates, if you combine the PQs in GSAK, they will go away.

 

No I am now using the Vista HCX but it should still be able to do it I guess. I never figured out how to get the POI in from GSAK but I will try again. I know when I try to put more than 1000 waypoints from GSAK in the GPS says it is out of memory even though I have at least a 1GB but I think it is a 2GB microSD card.

 

I am not worried about the dups but the point was that if I have 6 queries with 500 caches in them that is 3000 that may include 1000 dups but that still leaves 2000, but if I can put the waypoints as POI that would solve the problem. I will try it tonight as I have about 8 searches around my home (Dallas/Fort Worth area which has over 10000 caches) so it will give me a good learning session thanks for the help.

 

The quiries to get a total of 500 from home distance is 10.7, Work is 9.5, by airport 7.5, Arlington 6.9. I will try to combine those four together and get them in my GPS.

 

I just have never used the POI on the handheld or the Lowrance I use in my car on trips, maybe I should learn how to .

[+sbell111]

You just need to download Garmin's POI Loader. Once you have it installed, you open it up and it will search for your GPSr. Once it has found it, you will point it to the folder in which you have saved your gpx files and it will load them all to your Vista.

[+murfster]

There ought to be a way where you can go to a map. Select an area. And get all of the cache info from that are. Wouldn't that be cool

You can do this from the Geocaching.com Google maps. Display up to 500 caches on a map centered and zoomed how you like it, then order a query for everything displayed on the map.

 

I understand most things in this thread but not this? How do you get the caches on a google map?

 

Thanks!

Edited March 21, 2008 by murfster

[+Miragee]

Assuming that you still use a GPSmap 76CSx, you can add the caches as POI and only be lmited by the size of your microSD card.

 

Regarding the duplicates, if you combine the PQs in GSAK, they will go away.

No I am now using the Vista HCX but it should still be able to do it I guess. I never figured out how to get the POI in from GSAK but I will try again. I know when I try to put more than 1000 waypoints from GSAK in the GPS says it is out of memory even though I have at least a 1GB but I think it is a 2GB microSD card.

 

I am not worried about the dups but the point was that if I have 6 queries with 500 caches in them that is 3000 that may include 1000 dups but that still leaves 2000, but if I can put the waypoints as POI that would solve the problem. I will try it tonight as I have about 8 searches around my home (Dallas/Fort Worth area which has over 10000 caches) so it will give me a good learning session thanks for the help.

 

The quiries to get a total of 500 from home distance is 10.7, Work is 9.5, by airport 7.5, Arlington 6.9. I will try to combine those four together and get them in my GPS.

 

I just have never used the POI on the handheld or the Lowrance I use in my car on trips, maybe I should learn how to

After you download the Garmin POI Loader, follow the instructions in this thread.

 

You can create different folders of POIs to find them more easily if you end up sending 5000 caches to the card as POIs.

 

Edit to fix quotes . . .

Edited March 21, 2008 by Miragee

[+murfster]

AH HA! Never mind.. Found it.. never tried that before.

[+JohnTee]

Another silly POI trick . . .

 

Had my dad bring in his Garmin StreetPilot. Downloaded the Garmin POI Loader, took his list of caches and exported it as a single GPX file. Connected the StreetPilot by its USB Cable, turned it on, fired up the POI Loader and sent all of his geocaching waypoints to his StreetPilot as POI's. He can call up POI's on his StreetPilot and navigate to a POI, then hop out with his handheld when he gets there. He thought that was pretty neat.

 

Cache On!

 

JohnTee

 

Edited to add: You could probably just take your original GPX files from the PQ and load them straight to the car GPS. However, using GSAK (EasyGPS, etc.) would allow you to filter, manipulate, etc., before you export.

Edited March 22, 2008 by JohnTee