Road Trip Geocaching

[+dixichik]

We are planning a road trip and I was wondering what is the best way to find geocaches by route along the way? Any responses will be appreciated as we are still pretty green....Thanks

[+randco]

You can create a route by clicking on your user name in the upper right hand corner of the screen. The about midway down the right side of the page you will see User Routes and under that Create a Route. Follow the instructions at the top of the page.

 

I like to use Mapsource for my routes. I select the caches in the order in which I want to search for them. Then I can transfer the route to my GPS'r.

 

Have fun on your trip.

[+randco]

Darn system timeout errors. I don't know what happens on the west coast this time of day but the system really gets unstable.

 

This was a duplicate post.

Edited August 17, 2010 by randco

[jholly]

We are planning a road trip and I was wondering what is the best way to find geocaches by route along the way? Any responses will be appreciated as we are still pretty green....Thanks

 

First off the route can only be 500 miles long. For longer trips you need multiple routes. In population (i.e., cache dense) areas I find 0.5 mile radius more than enough. I also tend to filter out micros and others. Also limit the difficulty and terrain, unless you plan on spending a fair amount of time at each cache. I tend to go for 300-400 miles a day unless I'm on a delorme run. Check the difficulty and terrain boxes under the AND and select less than or equal in the drop down box. Don't want to spend time on virtuals or earthcaches? filter those also. It is harder to see in the PQ, but with GSAK you can quickly scan for caches that have DNF's in the last four. If there are a couple in a row those are candidates for being dropped. Of course if the DNF's were in snow country and you ran the PQ in February there probably is a good reason. When you first set up the PQ, don't select a day, you can go to your PQ page and take a look on the map and see how things settle out. Once your happy with the results select a day to run the PQ.

[+dixichik]

You can create a route by clicking on your user name in the upper right hand corner of the screen. The about midway down the right side of the page you will see User Routes and under that Create a Route. Follow the instructions at the top of the page.

 

I like to use Mapsource for my routes. I select the caches in the order in which I want to search for them. Then I can transfer the route to my GPS'r.

 

Have fun on your trip.

 

Thank you - I thought I remembered seeing something like that but had no idea where!!

[+dixichik]

We are planning a road trip and I was wondering what is the best way to find geocaches by route along the way? Any responses will be appreciated as we are still pretty green....Thanks

 

First off the route can only be 500 miles long. For longer trips you need multiple routes. In population (i.e., cache dense) areas I find 0.5 mile radius more than enough. I also tend to filter out micros and others. Also limit the difficulty and terrain, unless you plan on spending a fair amount of time at each cache. I tend to go for 300-400 miles a day unless I'm on a delorme run. Check the difficulty and terrain boxes under the AND and select less than or equal in the drop down box. Don't want to spend time on virtuals or earthcaches? filter those also. It is harder to see in the PQ, but with GSAK you can quickly scan for caches that have DNF's in the last four. If there are a couple in a row those are candidates for being dropped. Of course if the DNF's were in snow country and you ran the PQ in February there probably is a good reason. When you first set up the PQ, don't select a day, you can go to your PQ page and take a look on the map and see how things settle out. Once your happy with the results select a day to run the PQ.

 

Thank you - I am learning more everyday!

[+Markwell]

http://www.markwell.us/route.htm

[+michigansnorkelers]

How would you like to find ONLY those geocaches close to the exits?

 

A big problem with caches along a route is that you will get ALL geocaches along the route, even if the exits are 25 miles apart. Come now, you're not really going to get off the exit and backtrack 13 miles for that cache are you?

 

Here is ONE solution using GSAK. At least, it's the one I use.

 

You can create your route any way you want.

 

Now, using whatever method you want, run a PQ on the entire route. This might take several PQs if you get over 1000 caches or 500 miles.

 

Load all of these caches into GSAK. You could possibly have thousands of caches.

 

Now, here is the neat part. Go to the following site for the GSAK polygon editor.

 

http://gsak.net/google/polygoneditor.html

 

Set it for LINE and GPX. Then create the route again, but using ONLY the exits. When done, copy what's in the text box to NOTEPAD and save it as a GPX file.

 

Now, go into the GSAK filter function and select the polygon option. Then, LOAD that GPX file of all the exits as your filter. The result will be ONLY those geocaches near the exits! Pretty neat!

 

This is also useful to limit your search to geocaches within a State park boundary, etc. Use the polygon option rather than the line option.

Edited August 18, 2010 by michigansnorkelers

[+Team Cotati]

We are planning a road trip and I was wondering what is the best way to find geocaches by route along the way? Any responses will be appreciated as we are still pretty green....Thanks

 

Go with Markwell.

[+dixichik]

http://www.markwell.us/route.htm

 

WOW - ok thanks! (we have room in the car - it would be great just having you navigate from the backseat!!)

[+ngrrfan]

http://www.markwell.us/route.htm

 

WOW - ok thanks! (we have room in the car - it would be great just having you navigate from the backseat!!)

Navigators ALWAYS get right seat! Makes for better communications between navigator and pilot.

[+Markwell]

How would you like to find ONLY those geocaches close to the exits?

The polygon line method is pretty intensive - I usually just take the caches in GSAK, filter them some more, and then view them on my route in Google Earth. Exits and rest stops are pretty easy to see on the interstates.

 

However, if you take me along on a trip and let me navigate, we probably won't be going by interstate, and it will take quite a bit longer to get there.

 

[+dixichik]

How would you like to find ONLY those geocaches close to the exits?

The polygon line method is pretty intensive - I usually just take the caches in GSAK, filter them some more, and then view them on my route in Google Earth. Exits and rest stops are pretty easy to see on the interstates.

 

However, if you take me along on a trip and let me navigate, we probably won't be going by interstate, and it will take quite a bit longer to get there.

 

 

Great Flick! I like the road less traveled as well - better view of course. I stand corrected on my earlier post - if you navigate you get the "right seat"!