Road trip advice

[+DotRatAllStars]

Hi all!!! Looking for input on planning a road trip. Do's and dont's wishes, regrets. ? please share your thoughts!

 

Thanks

Dot Rat Allstars

[+Max and 99]

30 minutes ago, DotRatAllStars said:

Hi all!!! Looking for input on planning a road trip. Do's and dont's wishes, regrets. ? please share your thoughts!

 

Thanks

Dot Rat Allstars

Who will be with you?

[+DotRatAllStars]

Two man crew!

 

[+niraD]

1 hour ago, DotRatAllStars said:

Hi all!!! Looking for input on planning a road trip. Do's and dont's wishes, regrets. ? please share your thoughts!

When I've gone geocaching on road trips, I've been traveling with non-geocachers. So I would either pick up rest stop caches (using either preloaded PQ data or using live data with my smartphone app), or I would target specific caches that would also take my traveling companions to interesting locations (often virtual caches like GC870B or EarthCaches like GCZ5HB).

 

44 minutes ago, DotRatAllStars said:

Two man crew!

Two geocachers, or a geocacher and a non-geocacher?

Is the focus on numbers or is the focus on finding one or two interesting caches along the way?

What kinds of caches are you especially interested in?

[+JL_HSTRE]

I find that I always underestimate how like my geocaching will take. Not really an issue if by "road trip" you mean "power trail."

[+cerberus1]

2 hours ago, DotRatAllStars said:

Hi all!!! Looking for input on planning a road trip. Do's and dont's wishes, regrets. ? please share your thoughts!

 

We always seemed to add more in planning than time allowed.  Figure the D/T and add double the time JIC. 

Free time is snack or recover time.

Bring your own TP.  Narrow, single-ply carp doesn't cut it when needed...

[+DotRatAllStars]

Two Geocachers. Long road trip quality over quantity. Unique, historical, or just a wee bit different!

[+Smitherington]

I usually do this alone so I can be flexible and change things on the fly. But I usually have a target destination then look at caches along the route. I go for high favorites, virtuals, and webcams.  Of course I hit plenty that are more normal because I need to get out of the car on a regular basis too.

[+lee737]

I always incorporate many more caches on our lists than I know we'll have time for - in case one leg is rained out or you have extra time up your sleeve. Make sure you have devices fully loaded for offline usage also.

Don't forget to peek at the AL app occasionally either, you might drive past them inadvertently otherwise - less of an issue now, but we still do it.....

[+brodiebunch]

My long road trips usually have a destination with a mild time constraint. Because of that I usually go for traditional geocaches (small or regular sized) not too far off the highways or virtual geocaches. 

 

 

[+Goldenwattle]

I usually travel alone. I have driven many thousands of kms on road trips. 12,000kms was my longest. I pre-plan my trip and trace my route and list the cache names in a word document (which I take a print out of with me) with at least the coordinates, but often cache size and hint too. For more tricky caches I will add any previous logs and photographs that will be useful. Most caches though don't need this much information. Then I can put those in my car Tom Tom and not need to watch my GPS while driving. I also make notes against my finds, so I can write an individual log that night. I load up a couple of bulk loads and some individual caches (these are solved puzzles mostly) to start the trip with. I download other bulk loads of other parts of my trip to my lab top, and individual caches in places where caches are rare and far between. I also back this up on a USB stick. I can copy those bulk loads from my laptop to my GPS if there is no mobile signal; otherwise likely download a newer version. Even if I have a bulk-load, I still check at each destination that doesn't have many caches (presuming there is mobile coverage) for any new caches. Example, I loaded all the caches for a visit to the Chatham Islands, but once there, checked and found a new Earthcache and got FTF.

If there are lots of caches I mostly ignore micro caches and also only do traditional smalls and bigger, and challenging long distance multicaches (FTF on Canberra to Darwin multicache). If there are few caches, I will find them all, regardless of type. I once gave a favourite point for a very boring micro mintie tin cache, because it was there, and no other caches for about 100 kms either side.

Pre-planning doesn't mean I can't change my mind on my journey and take a different route, but having it pre-planned makes the trip more relaxing and removes much work while travelling.

I hope to better my 12,000 km road trip this year.

Edited January 30, 2022 by Goldenwattle

[+Smitherington]

I also drive a van for a bicycle trip that my nephew and a few others are involved in.  It has taken me completely across the northern US.  This year they will finish the ocean to ocean saga. During the biking I do caching along the bike route, trying to do about 10 each day.  If the caches are sparse (like in some parts of the western US) I expand my search to a few miles off the route so I can cache while the others pedal.  It is during the before and after biking sections of the trip that I can venture to new places.  Last year I drove over 6,000 miles in 33 days and found about 430 caches in 12 states with the biking across Montana in the middle.  This year they bike across North Dakota but I may have to stretch my trip from Michigan to include Arizona and New Mexico to complete the lower 48 states.  Rats.  Oh well, life is hard.

 

[+Gill & Tony]

I do all my route planning using GSAK.

 

Assuming I know where I am going (as opposed to making my mind up on the day), I first use the GetCachesOnOSMRoute macro to grab all1-3Terrain caches within 1 Km of my route plus all virtuals, earthcaches and webcams within 5 Km of my route.  I don't usually want high terrain, long hike caches on a road trip.  I will also grab cache within walking distance of our hotel(s). This gets me a lot of caches. 

 

I then look at the results on Google earth and delete caches which are obviously not wanted.  GSAK lets me delete caches and never reload them into that database.

 

Eventually I get down to the ones I really want, plus some optional roadside/rest area/P&G caches.  I print the cache pages for all EC's and virtuals so I can record my answers easily (there's a print option to double-sided print, but start each cache on a new sheet)

 

Then I print a list of the main caches in route order.  Finally, I load everything into my car GPS and my hand-held GPS (I don't use a smart phone for caching).

 

For a long trip (6 weeks around Europe on a conducted tour, for example) I have a database for each day and I reload the GPS devices as needed.

 

I also have my GSAK database on my PC on an external drive, so I can unplug that and take it with me with my laptop.  All my logging is done via GSAK and my data is always up to date.

[+igator210]

Don't over estimate how many caches you can get. My rule of thumb is 15 minutes per cache. This includes parking, walking to the cache, finding, sighing, rehiding and walking back to the car.

Edited February 2, 2022 by igator210

[+MNTA]

Remember to have fun and enjoy the adventure. Be wiling to change your plan should something come up.

My last weekend back country road trip, I was hoping to visit the Ice Caves but 2 mile to the entrance the road turned to wall of snow. Back the way we came, planned alternate route #2, snow was melting but the road turned to a bog of mud which was too much given we had 20 miles to go. Improvised alternate road #3 added 50 miles but was smooth sailing. Overall awesome day.