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Planning for a big trip - how to organize your info?


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Hi all! I am not new to geocaching, but I'm in the process of planning an 18 day camping trip this summer and I'm stumped on how to go about prepping for caches. In the past, we've always just uploaded our caches to our GPS, printed out the info in case we had no cell service and needed the hints, and went. But that was a weekend trip to one location, not 18 days that covers thousands of miles and 2 states. :)

 

We are planning on camping at several spots, using our RV as our homebase, and then go out exploring with our car. We have several state and national parks and landmarks on our list, but I also know that we will have downtime to go geocaching - if not at these parks, then at our lunch stops or at towns we pass through. We will have all our gear with us, but what we won't have is reliable cell service. The vast majority of places won't have coverage at all - which is why I want to plan ahead as much as possible.

 

My question is - has anyone done a similar trip? How did you narrow down your caches? How did you organize your information and keep it handy for each day? Some areas we'll be at are pretty lean on caches and that will be easy, but one of our campsites has literally hundreds of caches within a half hour's drive!

 

Thanks,

 

Stacy

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Hi all! I am not new to geocaching, but I'm in the process of planning an 18 day camping trip this summer and I'm stumped on how to go about prepping for caches. In the past, we've always just uploaded our caches to our GPS, printed out the info in case we had no cell service and needed the hints, and went. But that was a weekend trip to one location, not 18 days that covers thousands of miles and 2 states. :)

 

We are planning on camping at several spots, using our RV as our homebase, and then go out exploring with our car. We have several state and national parks and landmarks on our list, but I also know that we will have downtime to go geocaching - if not at these parks, then at our lunch stops or at towns we pass through. We will have all our gear with us, but what we won't have is reliable cell service. The vast majority of places won't have coverage at all - which is why I want to plan ahead as much as possible.

 

My question is - has anyone done a similar trip? How did you narrow down your caches? How did you organize your information and keep it handy for each day? Some areas we'll be at are pretty lean on caches and that will be easy, but one of our campsites has literally hundreds of caches within a half hour's drive!

 

Thanks,

 

Stacy

 

I would just run pocket queries in advance and have them saved on my computer so I can put them on my GPS as needed.

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When I plan my trips I know my route and where I will be stopping. I create a caches along the route PQ which I load on my nuvi to use for guidance then I create PQs for areas I want to cache more in an save them on a laptop that way I gave them available any time and load them onto my oregon as needed. Should my plans change a bit ill find a wifi spot and create a PQ as needed but with good planning I've only had to do this once.

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At a high level, here is what I do to plan long road trips:

 

1. Use Google Earth or Google Maps to lay out the route(s) and create the kmz or kml file of the route. Each file must be less than 500 miles long.

 

2. Create a Pocket Query for each of the route segments using the Cache Along a Route feature on gc.com. Optimize the distance around either side of the route to get the desired number of caches.

 

3. Load the PQs into GSAK and run Update Cache Data (light) to load the Favorite Points for each cache.

 

4. Set up and run filters to delete all waypoints with two or more DNFs, Needs Maintenance, or Needs Archived in the last four logs. Detele all disabled caches (assuming they weren't filtered out during the initial PQ run). Ruthlessly deleting cache with problems or that may have problems saves a lot of wasted time while on the road.

 

5. Set the first cache on the route at the Centerpoint. Using the User Defined fields in GSAK, Start numbering the desired order of hunting using the distance from the first cache and the number of favorite points. You may need to reset the centerpoint to a midpoint when the route takes a turn or when you double back on yourself. For a county or state run, I use the first User field for order I will be visiting the county or state, the second user field for the cache order in the county or state, and the third and fourth field for other information such as whether the cache helps meet another Challenge requirement.

 

6. Sort the final list (not the full PQ...this list should have only the top five or ten caches in each region/area/park you want to hit with everything else being gravy) and print a hard copy as a ready reference hunting plan while on the road.

 

7. Export the GSAK database as a Garmin POI file for use with the Nuvi to allow for head's up driving.

 

8. Export the GSAK database as a gpx file with no more than 5000 caches per file for use with the Garmin Oregon. Save the other gpx files to your laptop or other GPS compatible device for easy swap out as you move from region to region.

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You say you are traveling in an RV which means you will have power. A cheap laptop can be had for about $250 now so you can do it all on the road at a wifi location.

 

If you have an android tablet or phone you can do pqs on the fly and load them to your device plus you can upload your visits file to field notes to clean it out each time.

 

I spend six months a year in my RV and use the laptop method but before that my old Galaxy phone would load my Oregon.

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I'm about to head out on a nice long road trip--Boise to SLC to Zion Natl Park to Phoenix (conference) then on to Las Vegas to Death Valley, and home to ID thru Elko, NV. Normally I would do the "caches along a route", using .25 miles on each side of the route. But this time, I have certain caches to get (especially Potter's Pond) and a whole bunch of virtual caches. I love virtuals as most of them are very interesting. Will be using two Garmin handhelds, plus the car Garmin for some of them (entering coordinates). Will load most of them up before I leave, and then will likely make changes as I hit the different cities.

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When I make the drive between Pennsylvania and Missouri, which is roughly 800 miles each way, I tend to check out my route on MapQuest and pick cities that I'll be passing through, then look for some of the most favorite or interesting-sounding caches in each city. I have a binder that I usually use for notes on multi's and puzzle caches, but for this sort of trip, I organize my caches according to which ones I'll come across along the way. Because Earth Caches and Virtuals are a little harder to come by than traditional caches, I specifically seek those out - not only will they help plump nontraditional finds on my stats, but more importantly, they will take you to some of the most interesting places! I also try to pay special attention to any specific caching goals I'm working towards - for example, I really like cemetery hides and I am working towards a 100 Cemetery Caches challenge, so I'll go a little more out of my way for cemeteries along my route. I have never used the pocket query option - back when I first started caching, the consensus amongst the group that I talked to at events was that PQs were more of a pain than they were worth. Now that I'm hearing so many others suggesting them, I might have to give it a try!

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I'm about to head out on a nice long road trip--Boise to SLC to Zion Natl Park to Phoenix (conference) then on to Las Vegas to Death Valley, and home to ID thru Elko, NV. Normally I would do the "caches along a route", using .25 miles on each side of the route. But this time, I have certain caches to get (especially Potter's Pond) and a whole bunch of virtual caches. I love virtuals as most of them are very interesting. Will be using two Garmin handhelds, plus the car Garmin for some of them (entering coordinates). Will load most of them up before I leave, and then will likely make changes as I hit the different cities.

 

If you're about to head out soon you won't be finding potters pond, it's not reachable till late May or early June.

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Thank you for all the tips! MMaru - I am in the same boat, I am very resistant to technology (still use a paper and pen daily planner!) but if PQs are the best way to organize, I will have to look into that. I was originally thinking about the binder option but the amount of caches is just overwhelming. I do have a laptop I will be bringing with me, but most nights we will be getting in late and after getting the kids wound down and into bed, the last thing I want to do is tend to prep work for the next day. It would be much easier to grab a binder, but I just don't know if it's feasible.

 

GrateBear - SLC/Zion/Vegas was on our original itinerary! We had to bump that to next summer as we just didn't have the time to explore things the way they should be explored. We'll be covering northern New Mexico (Taos, Farmington) and all of Colorado (CO Springs - the area around Muller State Park is insane cache-wise), Rocky Mountain Natl Park, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Mesa Verde and everywhere in between. Particularly looking forward to 2 groups of caches in New Mexico - one is a park road, another a short loop, both right next to eachother. There are 40 caches on each!

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Depends

If I go with a group I let the group leader do it all because they have done it many times more then I have. I may send some caches of ones I maybe interested in.

If I am the leader I try to pick caches none of us have found.

If I go alone then I do PQs and run them through GSAK and delete ones that haven't been found in awhile after I check why. See how far off the road they are and if I have time to do them. Puzzles see if they are doable.

 

My next big trip I will be going to Boise. Lots of Virtuals I found out. Then head to Baker City. Then to Burnt River. Not much caches there but the trip wasn't suppose to be for just caching.

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I'm in the process of planning a 7+ week long trip to GeoWoodstock, covering 20+ states. First, for every state I grabbed (via the API in GSAK) all the virtuals in the state. Then I looked at the caches with the highest FP's, picking a lower limit depending on state (some states if you pick 20 favs and above you'd get 50-100 caches, others several hundred). I generally skip multi's and mystery caches to save time during set up and in the field, this trip I'm looking at the multi's as we have lot's of extra time. If I can find the rest areas along the route I'll try to grab caches there also. I also look at planned stops (parks and such) and see what's around.

 

All these caches I dump to MS Streets & Trips so I can see where they fall within the state, then focus on those near the basic route. Each state has a GSAK DB so I can load what I need from the laptop as I go (I will refresh the data just before loading as much as possible). I also have GDAK on an android tablet for spur of the moment caching.

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I'm about to head out on a nice long road trip--Boise to SLC to Zion Natl Park to Phoenix (conference) then on to Las Vegas to Death Valley, and home to ID thru Elko, NV. Normally I would do the "caches along a route", using .25 miles on each side of the route. But this time, I have certain caches to get (especially Potter's Pond) and a whole bunch of virtual caches. I love virtuals as most of them are very interesting. Will be using two Garmin handhelds, plus the car Garmin for some of them (entering coordinates). Will load most of them up before I leave, and then will likely make changes as I hit the different cities.

 

If you're about to head out soon you won't be finding potters pond, it's not reachable till late May or early June.

Arrghh--never thought about that! And the latest snow map shows about 40% water content in the snow around there, Thanks for the note-I appreciate it. Will make wifey happy, though, as she's not too excited about some of the places I take her to :laughing: Oh, well, shortens the time to get to Zion!

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...All these caches I dump to MS Streets & Trips ...

 

How do you get your coordinates into S&T? I would love to use S&T to optimize my travel time on a cache outing, but I don't understand how to go from coordinates I use on my Garmin Oregon to whatever it is that S&T reads. Could you help me out with this? Thank you!!

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If you're taking a laptop and/or android device you can use GSAK or GDAK to create databases with all caches of the area you're going to visit. From both these programs you can upload caches to your GPS every evening the day before you caching.

When on holiday in Denmark in 2013 I had all the countries caches in a database and after filtering the area we were to visit the next day I uploaded the caches to my Oregon 600. In the evening I downloaded the found/DNF/NM logs from the GPS to the laptop and published all logs. Then I selected the next day's area, refreshed the cache data, and uploaded the new batch of caches.

Last year I just had a tablet with me but the workflow was similar except for downloading the found/DNF/NM logs from the GPS as GDAK does not provide this function. I could however log each cache on the tablet and send the logs via API to GC.

 

It takes planning in advance ad creating PQs to fill the database but it's a timesaver when on the road. I already have a up to date database for our holiday in autumn and I'm in the process of solving mysteries that are close to the places we'll visit even though we might ending up not looking for most of them if there are other things to do or see.

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At a high level, here is what I do to plan long road trips:

 

1. Use Google Earth or Google Maps to lay out the route(s) and create the kmz or kml file of the route. Each file must be less than 500 miles long.

 

2. Create a Pocket Query for each of the route segments using the Cache Along a Route feature on gc.com. Optimize the distance around either side of the route to get the desired number of caches.

 

3. Load the PQs into GSAK and run Update Cache Data (light) to load the Favorite Points for each cache.

 

4. Set up and run filters to delete all waypoints with two or more DNFs, Needs Maintenance, or Needs Archived in the last four logs. Detele all disabled caches (assuming they weren't filtered out during the initial PQ run). Ruthlessly deleting cache with problems or that may have problems saves a lot of wasted time while on the road.

 

5. Set the first cache on the route at the Centerpoint. Using the User Defined fields in GSAK, Start numbering the desired order of hunting using the distance from the first cache and the number of favorite points. You may need to reset the centerpoint to a midpoint when the route takes a turn or when you double back on yourself. For a county or state run, I use the first User field for order I will be visiting the county or state, the second user field for the cache order in the county or state, and the third and fourth field for other information such as whether the cache helps meet another Challenge requirement.

 

6. Sort the final list (not the full PQ...this list should have only the top five or ten caches in each region/area/park you want to hit with everything else being gravy) and print a hard copy as a ready reference hunting plan while on the road.

 

7. Export the GSAK database as a Garmin POI file for use with the Nuvi to allow for head's up driving.

 

8. Export the GSAK database as a gpx file with no more than 5000 caches per file for use with the Garmin Oregon. Save the other gpx files to your laptop or other GPS compatible device for easy swap out as you move from region to region.

Yup best way to do it.

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...All these caches I dump to MS Streets & Trips ...

 

How do you get your coordinates into S&T? I would love to use S&T to optimize my travel time on a cache outing, but I don't understand how to go from coordinates I use on my Garmin Oregon to whatever it is that S&T reads. Could you help me out with this? Thank you!!

S and T can handle gpx files. Just open the pq in it.

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If you just want a vast amount of caches and then when you find one, just find the next closest, then PQ's are the way to go.

 

Personally, I try to be much more selective when I travel. Given enough time, I solve puzzles and then sort the list of nearby caches for favorite points well before I leave. I cherry pick what I want to find and add those caches to a bookmark list. Right before I leave, I run a PQ for that bookmark and load it up. The only caches loaded on my GPS/Nuvi will be those on that bookmark list because those are the ones I really want to find.

 

I used to run general PQ's that would give me 1000's of caches loaded on my GPS and everytime I did, I'd come back home and realize there were quite a few "choice" caches I didn't find simply because all those 1000's of other caches crowded them out. So, now the only caches that make it on to my GPS are the ones I specifically put on there. Anything else is a cache of opportunity by using my smartphone.

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If you just want a vast amount of caches and then when you find one, just find the next closest, then PQ's are the way to go.

 

Personally, I try to be much more selective when I travel. Given enough time, I solve puzzles and then sort the list of nearby caches for favorite points well before I leave. I cherry pick what I want to find and add those caches to a bookmark list. Right before I leave, I run a PQ for that bookmark and load it up. The only caches loaded on my GPS/Nuvi will be those on that bookmark list because those are the ones I really want to find.

 

I used to run general PQ's that would give me 1000's of caches loaded on my GPS and everytime I did, I'd come back home and realize there were quite a few "choice" caches I didn't find simply because all those 1000's of other caches crowded them out. So, now the only caches that make it on to my GPS are the ones I specifically put on there. Anything else is a cache of opportunity by using my smartphone.

We do a modified version of this - solve puzzles, look for large numbers of favorite points, and other nearby cool-looking caches and put those in a bookmark list. We run that as a PQ, but also do a 5-10 mile PQ around the hotels we'll be staying at (for after dinner caching or early-morning-before-the-rest-of-the-family-is-awake caching).

 

We also do printed maps with the 'must-do' caches marked in the order that it makes sense to do them, as well as travel time between caches and an estimated 'search allowance' for each cache.

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