Rest Areas

[+LynnMarieP+BTC]

I'm going on a trip for T'giving with the family. Unfortunately, DH won't have patience for me stopping to get geocaches, so I need to find ones at rest areas. Is there any way to do that on the run? I'm hoping to add Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa to my list of states this week.

[+cwgrizz]

Not sure if this will work as I am not a PM so don't have the privileges to run a query....but try this. Run a query for all caches within X feet or miles along your route. Load them in your GPSr. As you start getting close to a rest area look to see if you loaded any caches that are close. If there are insist that you need a rest break to stretch your legs. Discover a cache with a surprised look. I'm sure this will give your many extra caches, but should give you some close to rest areas. Best advise I can give from the lower end of this game. :DHa! Happy Caching

Edited November 22, 2011 by cwgrizz

[knowschad]

Will either of these bookmark lists work?

 

As you look through the caches on these lists, check to see if the caches are on any other bookmark lists that may be helpful.

 

http://www.geocaching.com/bookmarks/view.aspx?guid=8a65b710-8e8e-4895-bd81-af70daf1a30a

http://www.geocaching.com/bookmarks/view.aspx?guid=d0b42dd4-d153-4c2c-87fa-75d2d209c634

[+JesandTodd]

Cwgrizz is right, do 'caches along a route' and limit the distance to really close, say 0.1 miles

[+briansnat]

Cwgrizz is right, do 'caches along a route' and limit the distance to really close, say 0.1 miles

 

That's what I would do.

[+SwineFlew]

If you have a smartphone, just go to any reststop and pull up the caches. I havent see any reststop without a cache.

[+Dame Deco]

Last night I planned a trip from Ohio to Colorado and found all the rest areas just by using my mouse to drag along the route. The central plains aren't all that heavily cached, except for the big cities--you can zoom out pretty far and zoom in when caches show up sitting on the highway to see if they are at actual rest areas. I did 4 states or so in well under an hour. PQs that give you a zillion caches aren't always the way to go! I find just using the original maps (not the beta where I have to roll over a cache 5 times to get the link to pop up) and going over the route by hand gets me what I need. That way you also find an interesting virtual or whatever that's a mile or two off the highway in a small town.

Edited November 22, 2011 by Dame Deco

[+SgtSue]

Cwgrizz is right, do 'caches along a route' and limit the distance to really close, say 0.1 miles

 

That's what I would do.

Make it .25 to get caches in the back of those rest stops, still you will miss some. And yes you will get caches that are not accessible from the interstate, but you will also get some at gas stations along the way that you will be stopping at as well as restaurants. No matter how short the distance you will get the occasional cache that is on an access road or a road that passes under an overpass.

 

edit to remove duplicat info

Edited November 22, 2011 by SgtSue

[+aurght]

I'm going on a trip for T'giving with the family. Unfortunately, DH won't have patience for me stopping to get geocaches, so I need to find ones at rest areas. Is there any way to do that on the run? I'm hoping to add Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa to my list of states this week.

 

All good suggestions. I wish I had the smartphone for those.

I have preloaded individually from map view and done the narrow PQ (I used .5 mile) and was happy both ways. Using the PQ you do better defining the route in sections without the large cities.

Enjoy your trip.

[+LynnMarieP+BTC]

Thanks, everybody! I ran a pocket query, but it gave me way too many. I even shortened it to only include those from OKC to Omaha. I think I will use the smart phone suggestion and open it up when I see a rest area. I hope you are correct that there are caches at every rest stop. Tell you what... if I stop at a rest area without a cache, I'll drop one off. Nope, can't do that. Can't maintain it. Oh well. Thanks for helping, everyone!!!

[+Markwell]

What I do to catch rest area caches takes a little more planning.

 

Go ahead and do the route Pocket Query, and then open the GPX in Google Earth. You can then "fly" over your route and see the rest areas.

 

Alternatively, I found a U.S. listing some time ago of rest-areas (it's already out of date), but it is possible to do math where you indicate caches that are within 0.1 miles of your route, and then use other software to compare those caches to proximity of rest areas. MUCH more involved.

[+Dame Deco]

Or, you know, you can do as I suggested, and just manually go along your route using your mouse. Works perfectly for me, and doesn't take that long. There aren't that many rest areas per state.

[+Shop99er]

Cwgrizz is right, do 'caches along a route' and limit the distance to really close, say 0.1 miles

 

That's what I would do.

I would do .2 mile.

 

I dunno about there, but some of the stops out here are pretty durn big.

[+Chokecherry]

I went on my road trip it was through areas kind of barren in the rest stop department in general. But I did 2 miles away from the route with my pq. It was nice because we ended up in towns where bathrooms were, gas was and food. The trip was kind of barren on those amenities as well. In picking out caches I found a bunch of the rest stop ones were noted to be rest stops in the cache title. I ran the pq and hten hand picked which caches to do.