Waymark Wish List?

[+WistfulKate]

Gosh, I keep seeing some amazing Waymarks popping up on the front page and some I'd really love to visit someday.  Wouldn't it be nice if we had a way to save these in a sort of "want to visit" list?  How do you seasoned Waymarkers keep track of Waymarks you want to visit in the future?

[+8Nuts MotherGoose]

What you are seeing on the front page is the Featured Waymarks. They have been chosen because they are special in one way or another in their particular Category. If you look below the picture and to the right you will see, "see more Featured Waymarks" Click on it and the entire list will appear. These Waymarks are from all over the World. Unless you are planning a World Tour, I doubt if you will be able to get to them all.

You may be surprised at what you will find near your home. On the front page, make sure you are on the "Waymark Search" Tab. Leave the (optional keyword) blank, and put your zip code in the next blank, then hit Search. All the nearest Waymarks, out to 100 miles, will be listed from the center of the zip code outwards. Scroll through the list until you see something you would like to visit. Click on that Waymark to see all the information. Put it's GPS coordinates into your GPS unit/Smart phone and go get it. When you get there, take a photo and then log your visit online.

[+elyob]

Welcome to Waymarking.  Take care with that Edit Waymark button.

[+WistfulKate]

Thanks MotherGoose!

I guess the stuff I see on the front page was a poor example, as I don’t plan to be a world explorer, though I have been to Europe and Central America. I do hope to travel again to Scotland and Wales and see some ancestral locations. I would also love to do some family history trips to other states and we have an out of state family road trip planned for this summer. 

My family already enjoys letterboxing but I’ve found that I need to plan our trips ahead of time to keep the kids interested and my husband in a good mood. I figure it will be the same for Waymarking, as they don’t want to sit there while I look up the nearby Waymarks and their visit requirements. I love historical sites and cemeteries and am trying to share my passion with my kids. 

I’ve figured out the visiting part but wondered if there were some tips or tricks on planning ahead and getting the most out of your Waymarking trips. I guess for those “someday” locations I will use Pinterest if I really want to remember them and for the local stuff I will continue to use my trusty pen and notebook. ☺️

[vulture1957]

2 minutes ago, WistfulKate said:

My family already enjoys letterboxing but I’ve found that I need to plan our trips ahead of time to keep the kids interested and my husband in a good mood. I figure it will be the same for Waymarking, as they don’t want to sit there while I look up the nearby Waymarks and their visit requirements. I love historical sites and cemeteries and am trying to share my passion with my kids. 

I’ve figured out the visiting part but wondered if there were some tips or tricks on planning ahead and getting the most out of your Waymarking trips. I guess for those “someday” locations I will use Pinterest if I really want to remember them and for the local stuff I will continue to use my trusty pen and notebook. ☺️

For the kids, and even the hubby, there are 1100+ categories. Some of them will appeal to someone else in the family. Especially: 1000 Places to See Before You Die, Amateur and Professional Sports Stadiums, maybe Fishing Holes, Private and Professional Golf Clubs, Petting Zoos and Zoos. You can concentrate on those type of waymarks.

As to planning, I use an old 3-ring binder with school paper. Easily replaced if necessary, pretty cheap (get paper when school supplies go on sale in August). I listed the categories that I think I can find with 2 lines, top line for places I can go to for posting a new waymark, the bottom for waymarks to visit. Then, after all those pages are pages for areas I plan on visiting: close to home (within 25 miles or so), my mom's house, my daughter's house, my sister's house, Dallas and San Antonio areas. Over the weekend, I finished putting "push pins" on a Google map with the locations of those listed places, so I can see where they are quickly when going out to waymark.

[+WistfulKate]

On 4/25/2018 at 8:24 AM, vulture1957 said:

I finished putting "push pins" on a Google map with the locations of those listed places, so I can see where they are quickly when going out to waymark.

This is a great idea, I will try it for sure.  Thank you!

[vulture1957]

here's a screenshot of my map

https://screenshots.firefox.com/BoGoruCI6wCedXMq/www.google.com

different colors and flag for places to visit or post. Question mark is something I found that is cool, but can I find a category for it? I put a note as to which categories for each place (as they may be used for more than one category).

Edited April 26, 2018 by vulture1957

[+elyob]

Of course I went to the screen shot straight away looking for a question mark.  Where are they?

[vulture1957]

13 minutes ago, elyob said:

Of course I went to the screen shot straight away looking for a question mark.  Where are they?

south of I-40, south of the river, west of I-35. bottom right of the map.

[+elyob]

9 hours ago, vulture1957 said:

south of I-40, south of the river, west of I-35. bottom right of the map.

You found something interesting near the Rotary Play Ground.  What was it?

Edited April 27, 2018 by elyob

[vulture1957]

It's a Rotary playground, might have a Rotary International marker. I should have all the Lion's parks done the same way, as they may have the markers, but not all do.

[+fi67]

I have two lists (or files). One for waymarks to visit. You can download gpx or kml files from he search result pages (as premium member), but only one page at a time, i.e. 25 waymarks. I have downloaded the first ten pages of the closest unvisited waymarks from home (and other places I often visit, homes of close family members and the such), open them in Google Earth and save them as one files that contains them all, this is transferred to my smartphone, where I can check them in a gpx reader.

Locations I would like to post I collect in Google Earth as well. I use resources like our official national lists of historic sites and several fan web sites of things related to categories I like, e.g. castle lovers, waterfall afficionados, waychapel friends or similar. Additionally just anything I get to know. If these resources do not provide coordinates, I try to determine the exact locations as good as I can manually. A semi-transparent mapnik overlay (OpenStreetMap data) is very helpful for this. This collection is also transferred to the phone.

I usually do most of the research for the write-up after I got the pictures. This way I often learn about new features in that area that I missed before, this leads to new waypoints in the file and it takes a couple of visits until an area is really waymarked out.

[+Loonwatcher]

Thanks you both Fie67 and Vulture1957.  I haven't transfered WMs to my GPS, but will certainly try this approach ... sure beats having to file a bunch of potential waymarks in my head.

Happy WM and GC-ing.

[vulture1957]

4 hours ago, Loonwatcher said:

Thanks you both Fie67 and Vulture1957.  I haven't transfered WMs to my GPS, but will certainly try this approach ... sure beats having to file a bunch of potential waymarks in my head.

Happy WM and GC-ing.

By no means am I saying my way is the only way. I was just posting the "system" I have worked out. I'm sure others have different ways. I'm sure they work. It would be nice to hear what others use, so I could steal ideas and make my Waymarking easier.

Edited April 30, 2018 by vulture1957

[+MountainWoods]

I use BaseCamp with my Garmin GPSr.  I think some folks are hesitant to try it because it's free (since it only works with Garmins).

It's very easy to use and organize waypoints of any kind - Waymarks and Soggy Paper Game waypoints, geotagged photos, and so on.

Although it has the typical "tree structure" of a computer file system - items, lists, folders, and folders within folders, etc. - a given waypoint can belong in more than one list (within totally unrelated folders); and so on.

For folks like me who think very structured*, this is a very powerful tool.

And you can export lists (or individual waypoints) into a GPX or KML file for use elsewhere.  For example: I can set up a list of potential waymarks (as waypoints), export them, put them on my Android phone, and use a GPX Viewer application to quickly see them and navigate to them by the usual means (Google maps, etc.).

(* I rarely have to Search the My Documents folder, because everything is already laid out in a logical structure.)

[+Loonwatcher]

Thank you MW. Not the first time I hear about Base Camp. Will certainly look into it.

[+T0SHEA]

Well, I believe we've given a quick rundown in previous threads of how we prepare for a trip, but I'll do a quick review here.

We've tried many methodologies over the years, including Base Camp and the Magellan equivalent, as we use both Magellan and Garmin GPSrs. We got over using either one when we discovered that the simplest method (for us, at least) was to simply create an Excel sheet with columns for name, town, coords (2 columns), address, icon, then any comments we want to add. Each page of the sheet is saved as a CSV then converted to a GPX (or combined into a single CSV before conversion) and loaded on both GPSrs.

We will usually plot out the proposed route on a paper map then methodically follow our route as we do the next step. Nothing ever goes on the map, everything goes straight to the Excel sheet. A lot of quick copying and pasting here can expedite things even further.

As for finding WMs to go after, we start with national, state/province and municipal heritage registers, Roadside Attractions websites, Church Finder type websites, benchmark websites and a few others I can't think of at the moment. Barb will also check out Geocaches in certain areas as they are often placed near a point of interest. Another good resource can be heritage/historic plaque/sign websites. They tell you right where the history is, often with coords. During the trip we will inevitably find lots more stuff to fill out our time. Often we may enter only a historic site or two for a town then just drive around exploring and WMing the whole town. You usually get to meet more of the locals this way, as well.

One thing we always spend lots of time on is searching for new categories. We absolutely loathe getting home to find that we'd missed a rare new category that we should have gotten, only because we hadn't researched an area thoroughly.

Keith

PS - when we get home our original Excel sheet then becomes the basis for recording additional info required to post all those WMs - 2 birdies with one rock. 

Edited May 3, 2018 by BK-Hunters
ADDED PS

[WalksfarTX]

When we plan a trip to a location I like tp use Google maps.  Here is a trip to Grapevine, TX that I am planning.  https://drive.google.com/open?id=1IjtFxlQbDCewlOrvBIRTj4jrDW_jE_X8&usp=sharing

 

The camera icon means the sight has an existing waymark and I only need a picture.  The + icon means it is something I can add so I need multiple pictures.  

 

To learn how to do this https://www.google.com/maps/about/mymaps/

 

Unfortunately the maps you create on your home computer don't sync with the smart phone app version.