route planning in the app

[+poppiseed]

ok, so forgive me if this has been discussed, i searched and didnt see it come up...

is there any way to make a more intuitive route planner? like, if i had a list of caches i wanted to go for on a day, i could "plan route," and it would load into my map of choice, giving me a more linked turn by turn plan for my day? i know i could load each into google maps individually, but having it as a function would be so smooth.

i can see it being really useful in powertrail situations, you can just leave the phone on the dash, and it'll pop over to the next cache on the list. maybe you could even sort via distance, difficulty, type, attributes?

 

i know google maps has this function already, but it would be so nice to just push a button and have them all load in. im very lazy.

i had a few beers, and i thought this would be a neat add. it would sure make me use whatever app implemented this a lot more.

[+Max and 99]

21 minutes ago, poppiseed said:

ok, so forgive me if this has been discussed, i searched and didnt see it come up...

is there any way to make a more intuitive route planner? like, if i had a list of caches i wanted to go for on a day, i could "plan route," and it would load into my map of choice, giving me a more linked turn by turn plan for my day? i know i could load each into google maps individually, but having it as a function would be so smooth.

i can see it being really useful in powertrail situations, you can just leave the phone on the dash, and it'll pop over to the next cache on the list. maybe you could even sort via distance, difficulty, type, attributes?

 

i know google maps has this function already, but it would be so nice to just push a button and have them all load in. im very lazy.

i had a few beers, and i thought this would be a neat add. it would sure make me use whatever app implemented this a lot more.

Not on the app, but maybe this is helpful: Geocaches along a route:

https://www.geocaching.com/help/index.php?pg=kb.chapter&id=7

Edited April 19, 2021 by Max and 99

[+mustakorppi]

Hmm. The Google Maps app can receive a "navigate from where I am to this location" type of route from another app (e.g. what the Geocaching app currently does). Google Maps can also add additional stops in a route. Does anyone know if it can receive a route with multiple stops from another app?

 

If it can, this feature shouldn't be all that difficult to implement (on geocaching app's side, put the locations of posted/solved coordinates of caches in a list as stops in a route ordered by by distance and let the user adjust manually in Google Maps if they must). Get's a bit messy when separate parking waypoints are involved... I wouldn't expect the official app to get this feature, but others might.

 

As for what exists now, it didn't fit my needs, but it might be worth trying Cachetur.no Their whole purpose is to plan geocaching trips.

 

What I need on my bikepacking trips is a pre-determined route from cache to cache (not on-the-fly routing), so what I ended up doing is pick my caches into a bookmark list and download that as GPX. I use ridewithgps.com to automagically draw the route from cache to cache (some manual work required here to figure out where each cache is on the ridewithgps.com map so you can tell it where the route should go, and more manual work if you decide to tweak its route selection...). Once I'm done I export that route as another GPX file.

 

I then import both GPX files into Garmin Basecamp. In Basecamp I verify that the route really goes to the caches I picked, add additional waypoints (places to get more water and food, potential camp sites etc....). The whole thing gets exported as a single GPX file that shows a route and geocaches as waypoints along it. This can be used in almost any Garmin GPSr or in smartphone apps such as Guru Maps on iPhone.