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Picked up Garmin Colorado 300


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You really don't need anything else except for a premium membership at geocaching.com. Set up a pocket query (PQ) or two on the GC website. When the query result is emailed to you unzip it and put those *.gpx files in the \Garmin\GPX directory either on the unit or on the card. The PQ will return up to 500 caches in one file.

 

The discriptions also display better when you use this method. Seems the PQ cleans up some of the formatting tags in the descriptions. When I used the 'Send to GPS' method the descriptions would display the formatting tags instead of recognizing and implementing them.

 

Honestly, the only time I'll use the 'Send to GPS' function now is if a new cache has been placed and I want to seek it out immediately.

Edited by mattalbr
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You really don't need anything else except for a premium membership at geocaching.com. Set up a pocket query (PQ) or two on the GC website. When the query result is emailed to you unzip it and put those *.gpx files in the \Garmin\GPX directory either on the unit or on the card. The PQ will return up to 500 caches in one file.

 

The discriptions also display better when you use this method. Seems the PQ cleans up some of the formatting tags in the descriptions. When I used the 'Send to GPS' method the descriptions would display the formatting tags instead of recognizing and implementing them.

 

Honestly, the only time I'll use the 'Send to GPS' function now is if a new cache has been placed and I want to seek it out immediately.

 

Thanks mattalbr for such a quick response!

What about maps?

I think I will go ahead and become a premium member as well - thanks again

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Here's a link that goes through how to get caches onto the Colorado:

 

http://garmincolorado.wikispaces.com/geocaching

 

As for maps it depends on your location and what you need. If you just want topographic maps, mainly useful for outdoors activities like hiking and geocaching you can purchase Garmin's Topo2008 (1:100k for the entire US), Garmin's 24k topos for the western states or look at some of the free topo maps available at http://gpsfiledepot.com which are quite good . If you want accurate road maps with autorouting capability and live in North America, Garmin's City Navigator North America NT 2009 is what you are looking for.

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One point of clarification. The free maps at GPSfiledepot are outstanding (it looks like you are from TX and there is a great map for TX) but they do not include DEM (digitial elevation model) which is used to prodice shaded relief (nice to have sometimes to figure up from down) but haivng it on makes the map harder to see. So it is something you shoud turn on only if you need it. If you load and turn on in the GPS TOPOUSA2008 and one of the maps from GPSfileDepot, TOPOUSA does not show, the map from GPSfiledepot shows with shaded relief. So if you want to see shaded relief, you need to have topoUSA2008.

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I have a related question I couldn't find the answer too on the wiki. The maximum amount of GPX files you can download onto the Oregon is 200 according to what I read. The maximum number of geocaches you get from pocket quiries is 500. My question is how does the Oregon load all 500 PQ cache descriptions when its limit is 200 GPX files?

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The PQ comes as a single gpx file containing 500 caches. You'll run into the 2000 cache limit long before the file limit.

Wow that was a fast answer!

 

So when you transfer using Garmin Communicator each geocache is loaded one-at-a-time and each geocaches counts as one GPX file?

 

Another question if I may. Can you load say 10 PQs of 500 geocaches each (5000 total or 3000 over the limit) and somehow store the extra 3000 geocahes for later display?

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That's right - every send-to-gps produces one file containing one geocache.

 

You can't have more than 2000 geocaches loaded in all of your GPX files. The unit will flag an error if this occurs and some geocaches just won't display on the unit. You can store gpx files on your gps but you'll need to rename them to something like mygpxfile.xxx so the unit won't load them. You can swap gpx files by renaming the active files to mygpxfile.xxx and the inactive files to mygpxfile.gpx, BUT you need a computer to do this -- no way to do it in the field.

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