Geocache Road Trip

[+SalientAnimal]

Hi All,

 

I am planning a Geocache Road Trip towards the end of March / beginning of April next year and I was hoping someone could give me some advice on how to plan this trip. My trip will consist of a drive down to Cape Town (South Africa). I will start my trip in Johannesburg, on to Bloemfontein where I will spend one night and then on to Port Elizabeth where I will again spend another night. I will then make final drive to Cape Town where I will be for roughly 10 days.

 

On my way back I will stop over in Beaufort Wes for a night and then the next day stop over in Kimberley.

 

I was hoping that someone would be able to advise me of how I can plan this trip ensuring that I make the most of the trip, by locating the most possible Geocaches, but also at the same time not spending too much time on the road driving around as I have a limited amount of days available to me.

 

Any help, advice, or guidance will be highly appreciated.

 

Thanks,

SalientAnimal

[+Mr. Wilson & a Mt. Goat]

My advice would be to spend some time picking out caches with higher numbers of favorites points if you want quality, and look for groups of caches if you want numbers. It's a lot easier to do many caches in a short period of time then say the same number of caches spread out over an entire day of driving.

 

I did a 1500km cycling trip across eastern Canada just over a year ago, and one of the most important things I found was it's really important to stick to your route and to not spend too much time searching for a cache. Make bookmark lists of the caches you want to get, ensure they're all active and do not have 2or3+ DNF's in a row for recent logs, then stick to those caches. Also, if you can't find one after 10 minutes (for example), move on.

You'll probably have time during the evening to do some caching too, so load a bunch of caches near where you're staying. If there are a bunch around there that you want to get it may be a good idea to not do as many during the day of driving.

 

Sounds like you have lots of time in Cape Town so look for those most favorited caches if you want to find the best of the best.

Edited December 31, 2014 by Mr. Wilson & a Mt. Goat

[+colleda]

Excellent advice there.

[+Gill & Tony]

I recently did a trip which involved 4 days driving from Anchorage to Seward and Whittier in Alaska, from Seattle to Vancouver via Whidbey Island, from Vancouver to Whistler and from Jasper to Calgary via Lake Louise and Highwood Pass. I planned it all using a combination of Pocket Queries along routes and GSAK.

 

First, I created pocket queries for each route with a 5Km limit either side and restricting D/T values to what I felt achievable on a road trip. In my case D<3.5, T<3.5. I then made a different version of the same PQ with just mystery caches but with D unspecified and T<3.5.

 

Having run all the PQ's and saving them for future use, I loaded all the GPX files into a clean database in GSAK and ran the GoogleEarth macro, so I could see where everything was. There were a lot of caches I knew I would never attempt so I used the DeleteIgnoreIgnore macro to eliminate them. This deletes them from the GSAK database, adds them to the ignore list and to GSAK's own ignore list. This way, when I ran the PQ's again, they didn't get reloaded.

 

Then I sorted the rest on favourite points and eliminated a lot of many finds no FP's.

 

Since I had several months preparation time available, I could look at the puzzles and multis and see which ones were worth trying. I didn't want to spend a lot of time doing a six-stage multi, but I was happy with a simple offset multi. A lot of puzzles were eliminated, but quite a few were solved.

 

About once a month, initially, I ran all the PQ's again to pick up any new caches and eliminate those which had been archived. Eventually I came down to a list of "Must do" caches and I printed out a list of them, so I could use them as "Stepping Stones" for the trip. I fed each one, in turn, into the GPS and then stopped at any on the way which didn't require too much of a detour. That way I tried all the really good ones and got a few extras as well.

 

I printed out all earthcaches, virtuals and those multi's I wanted to attempt. Personally, I like writing the answers on paper so I don't forget them when it is time to log.

 

Finally, the day before I left, I ran a GSAK refresh to update all caches and then loaded everything into the GPS's.

 

The GoogleEarth macro is a real boon for this sort of planning. 5Km either side lets me find caches at scenic locations off the main highway, but also includes a lot of hiking caches which I didn't want to attempt on a road trip. GoogleEarth lets me distinguish between the two.

 

Hope that is of help.

 

Cheers

 

Tony

[+Roman!]

I have probably 50,000+ km logged on trips over the last 2 years including going from east coast to west coast 3 times and from Alaska to Mexico.

 

Here is how I pkan my trips:

 

1) select my route and pick where I'll sleep.

2) run caches along a route for my trip (usually select 2-300 meters)

3) create 200 cache PQs for the town/city I'll be spending the night in and check for high favorite caches as well.

4) search for and virtuals that may near the route I'm taking, a great way to sight see.

5) check for easy earthcaches along my route.

 

I usually structure my trip down to minutes and use some traditional caches at various places as waypoints and have a time I should be there.

 

I have a print out of the selected traditionals, virtuals and earthcaches in order to be found along with my ETA and for the virtuals and EC the info I need to find.

Edited December 31, 2014 by Roman!