Question for all you Garmin users out there

[+Surferjo]

Question for all you Garmin users out there. I was wondering how you store and retrieve your caches?

 

I currently use a Magellan Explorist 600 which allows me to sort my caches by park or town, or whatever actually. For example I will pick a park to bring to kids to for a day of caching. Ill create a bookmark and give it the park name. Now ill add all the caches in that park to my bookmark and load it up to my Explorist.

 

Now when I search for caches I have them all stored under the park name which makes it very easy to manage over time.

 

Lets say on the way back from the park we are driving by a park & grab which I have saved under the bookmark called “Park & Grabs” to click goto new cache and select my Park & Grab file and we are ready to go.

 

So I guess my question to you Garmin folks is how does the Garmin separate cache areas? How do you differentiate and search your GPS for a specific cache?

 

Just asking because my Explorist is getting a little long in the tooth and the new ones don’t seem to get the greatest reviews.

 

Thanks in advance.

[+Evshro & son]

I use an Oregon and Colorado, and on both I just drag my GPX file in to the appropriate folder. There is no need to use other software like you do with Magellan (Can't remember the name of it now). Anyway, whenever and wherever I am out I can see cache icons on the map and can pick a cache or two up spontaneously. Now, if I know I am going outside my immediate are, like to a state park or conservation area, I will Build a queary with the parks zip code and drag it into the file system of the colorado or Oregon. The same thing could be done with a route. The bottom line is that I always have the caches in my area on my GPS and see them on the map. The Colorado and Oregon also allow for you to view the cache descriptions on the gps. I had an Explorist or two myself and am happy I upgraded.

[+StarBrand]

While many magellean users are really enthusastic about that folder feature - I just don't get it. My Garmin unit shows me all of the caches that are nearby to my current location. Either in a list or displayed on a map. My Oregon and Colorado units allow me to select those and read the descriptions and see terrain and difficulty ratings etc.

[+Surferjo]

Interesting…. So if you’re sitting in your car in your driveway and you want to look up a specific cache how do you do it? Do you than have to sift through everything you have loaded in your GPS? What if that’s like 300 caches like I have on my Explorist.

 

Also how does the Garmin name the caches? I have noticed that some bring them in as the cache ID and not the Cache name (this could be my ignorance of Garmins BTW).

[+StarBrand]

Interesting…. So if you’re sitting in your car in your driveway and you want to look up a specific cache how do you do it? Do you than have to sift through everything you have loaded in your GPS? What if that’s like 300 caches like I have on my Explorist.

 

Also how does the Garmin name the caches? I have noticed that some bring them in as the cache ID and not the Cache name (this could be my ignorance of Garmins BTW).

Depends on how you load them on the eTrex line - can load as either GC code or friendly name - I perfer GC code as that is always unique. On the Colorado and Oregon series - you can toggle back and forth. On any of the units you can bring up a list of closeest caches or bring them up alphabetized or search by name. Can also scroll the map to a location to see what caches are loaded for that area.

 

I tend to sift through caches before loading them up on my unit.

Edited July 22, 2009 by StarBrand

[+Rockin Roddy]

The one thing I think a folder system would be useful for is my hidden caches as opposed to the ones I'm searching. Other than that, search alphabetically or by name woks for long distance cache runs as does scrolling the map!

 

I'm not a Garmin user though!

[+GeekBoy.from.Illinois]

Question for all you Garmin users out there. I was wondering how you store and retrieve your caches?

 

I currently use a Magellan Explorist 600 which allows me to sort my caches by park or town, or whatever actually. For example I will pick a park to bring to kids to for a day of caching. Ill create a bookmark and give it the park name. Now ill add all the caches in that park to my bookmark and load it up to my Explorist.

It is hard to generalize across all Garmin units. Some Garmin units store Geocaches as waypoint (intermixed with "normal" waypoints). Others store them separately in GPX files. The newest Garmin GPSr units store geocaches in GPX files and therefore you can sort them just about any way you can think of. For me, I tend to sort my geocaches my Status (unfound & active, unfound & inactive, found, ...). Within status, I sort them down even further by county where the cache is listed.

 

On one of my older Garmin units, it used the waypoint method, and I would just sort geocaches my proximity to the area I was planning to be. Since it could hold 1000 waypoints, I used to load about 900 geocaches and be able to cover an area of about 40 miles radius.

 

Your eXplorist has a nice feature that I have not seen on another GPSr unit since. It only allows 200 geocaches per "file" but it does allow as many files as you can fit in the unit's memory or SD card. On the flip side of that though, there is no easy way to search through all the files to find the cache that is nearest to where you currently are. If you have 15-20 files, you need to potentially perform 15-20 "find nearest geocache" searches.

[+bittsen]

I upgraded from the Explorist and found that the Colorado, while a little buggy at times, is a much superior Geocaching tool than the Explorist.

I didn't like that I had to pick a file of geocaches each time I went to a different area. It was a little easier to organize the caches that way with the Explorist and, in some ways wish it was available on the Colorado but with the addition of GSAK as a tool, I don't need the files separated on the Colorado. With e Colorado you can overlap caches with no problem so you don't have to worry about it. With the Explorist you had overlaps that could cause you to go back to an area already searched.

With the Explorist, it would only show parts of hints if the hints were long. The Colorado doesn't truncate at all so you have the full hint, full description, full logs if you want them. Also, when you log a found cache on the Colorado, they stay found. The Explorist would drop found logs after 10, and sometimes for no reason at all.

The Colorado is a bit clunky when it comes to navigating through the menus. The Explorist is a little more straight forward in the menus. I am still not happy with the Colorado when it comes to navigating to caches through a list. I can only hope they will correct the feature in a future upgrade. The Explorist, as I recall, was a little easier to navigate through the cache list.

Overall, the Colorado kicks major donkey for geocaching (now that some of the bugs have been removed) over the Explorist but the Explorist is still a good GPS overall. I was never disappointed with its accuracy. My son uses his Explorist for geocaching and does quite well with it.

[+2Wheel'in]

The one thing I think a folder system would be useful for is my hidden caches as opposed to the ones I'm searching. Other than that, search alphabetically or by name woks for long distance cache runs as does scrolling the map!

 

I'm not a Garmin user though!

 

Owned/hidden Caches, Waymarks, Benchmarks, and Found Caches, etc., can all go in the Oregon/Colorado as POIs. Each in a separate directory, and searchable by ID.

 

Bill

[+Surferjo]

Ok I think I got it now.

 

I beleive I will upgrade to the Dakota depending on the feedback on the Forums but I have to say I still think being able to power up my Explorist and view a LOC/GPX file which contains only caches for a park or specific area is a far superior method of storage. Its basically how most computers store files. I’m surprised this was dropped by Magellan when so many people say its one few superior things they had over Garmin.

[+Maingray]

Ok I think I got it now.

 

I beleive I will upgrade to the Dakota depending on the feedback on the Forums but I have to say I still think being able to power up my Explorist and view a LOC/GPX file which contains only caches for a park or specific area is a far superior method of storage. Its basically how most computers store files. I’m surprised this was dropped by Magellan when so many people say its one few superior things they had over Garmin.

 

It was fiddly, not amenable to searching en masse, and cache listings overlapped. Garmins, in general, give you this choice via unlimited yet categorized POI ... or just simply load as geocaches.