Cache planning

[+manypims]

What steps do you vets do when planning for a day of caching? Do you plot your entire route in advance and bookmark or pocket query that route? Or do you find one cache and then go to the next closest without the aid of advance planning? Or maybe a combination of both? I have a laptop with a wireless card with me in the car and I usually do the send to Garmin feature and then drive to the site. And so on and so forth.

Edited April 21, 2008 by manypims

[+Night Stalker]

We are terrible when it comes to planning. When we first started we used National Geographics Topo and added all the caches we were going for that day. We planned our entire route.

 

These days I load my pocket query of the area we are going to be caching in and just start out. I hit my find button and choose the closest cache. We continue from there. If we pull up and don't like the looks of an area I hit find again and skip that one. Sometimes there is a particular cache we want to find so I search for that one first, but after that it is all pot luck.

[+trooperdjb]

I usually like to plan my route. Have the pocket querries of the area loaded but before going out I look through the list and set up a route in mapsource showing the planned caches. Print out an 8.5x11 map showing the major roads and the cache names. It seems to save some backtracking while driving around since I don't normally hunt in a cache rich environment and it can sometemes be 5 or 10 miles between caches.

[+nekom]

First I identify a target cache, one that sounds like I'll really enjoy it. Then I check the route in google earth and see if there are any caches nearby or on the way that I might want to grab. I usually have plenty of caches already in my GPS from PQ's, so if time permits I might find a few more.

[+The Pathman]

First we decide on what direction we would like to go. Than check on what caches are available at this time of year(still A lot of snow in some areas). Than I will do a PQ and we will decide which caches to go for. Download everything to the GPS and PDA pack whatever we think we might need for the day (normally too much) and out the door we go.

 

Simple huh

[+ShowStop]

See this topic for a similar recent discussion:

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=187276

 

I use GSAK to review and order my caches while routing them on Mapsource or Google Maps, then print an ordered list with hints from GSAK. A list of 50 caches takes me about 2hrs to prepare. I upload the cache info with D/T ratings and hints to my GPS directly from GSAK and then upload the .gpx file to my PDA for in-the-file cache page reviewing.

 

People constantly ask how to I generate lists like this:

http://www.showstop.org/geocaching/list/yv-dh-sunday.html

 

The hint column is an optional print field in GSAK. Use the custom column and the short code for hint is %hint.

Details here: http://www.gsak.net/help/hs22000.htm

 

User Sort column:

http://gsak.net/help/hs32550.htm

Usort - (User Sort) Many users like to sort the GSAK data in their own "special" way. Some also like to set a sequence to print the grid format just before they go caching. "User Sort" will address these issues and make allocating a special sequence to your data quite easy. The "User Sort" column has some "special" properties to make allocation of a sequence number a snap.

 

Firstly, if you double click on a cache in this column it will automatically update with your next sorted value (a number that is incremented by your pre set value). You can see/set this number via Tools=>Options=>General "user sort" box. This should make it very easy to allocate your own sequence to a set of waypoints - just double mouse click on the waypoints in this column in the order you would like them sorted.