KateAndCo Posted January 10, 2009 Share Posted January 10, 2009 Just got mt Garmin Venture HC and we are planning as a family to get started with Geocaching. Are the maps recommended for the Garmin or is it OK to just use with a paper map. We will only be doing easy caches as family is young (2, 3 and 6 years old). Advice wold be appreciated before I splash out. I also have a PDA phone - is there anthing useful for that. Quote Link to comment
+TeamThom Posted January 10, 2009 Share Posted January 10, 2009 Welcome to the sport. My first year geocaching was spent with an old Garmin 12XL which does not take maps. I printed out the cache description pages, with map, and headed out. It took a little more preparation time but, it worked find. Quote Link to comment
+DustyWalker Posted January 10, 2009 Share Posted January 10, 2009 Just got mt Garmin Venture HC and we are planning as a family to get started with Geocaching. Are the maps recommended for the Garmin or is it OK to just use with a paper map. We will only be doing easy caches as family is young (2, 3 and 6 years old). Advice wold be appreciated before I splash out. I also have a PDA phone - is there anthing useful for that. When I first started out I had a GPS without maps at all (a blank screen with an arrow) and marked the general location of the caches on a paper map when I was planning an outing. (I didn't need the paper map if I was in a place I was familiar with.) When I got close I used my GPS to find them. After that I used a GPS with just the basemap for a bit, that worked fairly well, but there was a lot of map detail missing. Now I have a full set of topo and metroguide maps on my GPS and it makes things much easier. Short answer- sure you can get by without the mapsource maps but it is easier and more convenient with them. Quote Link to comment
+briansnat Posted January 10, 2009 Share Posted January 10, 2009 (edited) Thousands of people find caches without using any GPS maps. That said, maps do make geocaching a lot easier. If you have topo maps you can tell which side of a stream a cache is on, so you start out on the correct side. You can tell if the cache is at the bottom of, or top of a cliff or hill and therefore choose the right trail. You'll know if there is a swamp, ravine, cliff, hill, pond or river between you and the cache. City Navigator would be a waste with the Venture HC because it doesn't support autorouting, but MetroGuide gives you up to date street maps and you get a database of millions of services and businesses, so if you need to find the nearest post office, gas station, hotel, restaurant, marina, campground, museum, park, school, mall, grocery store, etc. Metroguide will tell you where it is. With both Topo and Metroguide you can see right on the GPS screen which roads will bring you nearest to the cache. If the cache is in a park it will show which roads enter the park. You can also load the maps to your PC, upload the caches to it and plot your day's caching route, then load that route back to your GPS. Look at maps as a major convenience, but not a necessity. You can likely use your PDA phone to download cache pages to it, so you don't have to carry around stacks of caches pages. Depending on your phone's OS there are numerous products that will do this. Cachemate is a popular one for the Palm. Edited January 10, 2009 by briansnat Quote Link to comment
KateAndCo Posted January 10, 2009 Author Share Posted January 10, 2009 Thanks for your advice everyone - I'm off today to a couple of local Caches - will see how it goes. Quote Link to comment
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