Road Trip

[+Contagion]

A long time friend of mine just got a job here and will be moving from Detroit to start work on the 11th of April. He offered to pay my airfair if I'd fly out and accompany him on the drive back. Sounds like a weekend adventure to me!

 

I though I remembered a thread about caches on I-90 but when I searched for it I couldn't find it and I don't know if that only applied to the Washington portion of I-90 or if it was more exhaustive.

 

But my general question would be how would I go about determining caches I can search for along a distributed route like 704 miles of I-90? Is there an easy method for this sort of thing?

 

That also raised an interesting idea that I don't know if anybody had ever disscussed. Site support for Cache Collections. Basicly a bunch of caches that fit some theme, or route. "Some theme" is very vauge but that's cause it's only limited by the creativity of the collection creator. The collection itself could just be informative, or it could act as a virtual cache. As in... visit these caches and you tell ME what the common theme is.

 

In my situation... somebody might go to the trouble of determining all the caches withing 1 mile of I-90 and then create a collection to group them together for others to reference. or you could make serveral collections, one for I-90 WA, one for I-90 ID, etc, etc. If the database is set up correctly you could even have a collection of collections. "I-90 All"

 

All of this can already be done if you want to host your own little web page with links to geocaching.com. But if it were built into the system the page listing a collection could easily link to caches, show current status of active/inactive, reflect current difficulty ratings, etc.

 

Essentially, you're just looking at two extra tables in the database. One to define a collection, and a cross table for the many:many relationship to the individual caches. Though, restraints on collection size might be a concern. Approval mechanisms are also something I'm not able to address since I don't really know what happens on that end.

 

This isn't meant as a formal feature request just an idea I had that I thought I'd throw out to see what everybody thought.

[+Willapa]

I think this link may help you find what you're looking for.

 

I do have to say that I don't think there will be much time for caching if you plan to go from Detroit to Seattle in a weekend!

[+Bull Moose]

It's a lot of work. I just did a polygon of a stretch of I-90 between Albert Lea, MN, and Sioux Falls, SD, and that took some work. Fortunatly I-90 is pretty straight most of the way through the west so if you want to take larger swaths - especially in the cache baren areas, it's not that hard to polygon it with a map program.

[MarcusArelius]

Once you get a collection of caches (by whatever means) you can publish them in a bookmark list. Although I have not created one myself yet.

 

Bookmarks

Edited March 30, 2005 by MarcusArelius

[+McLaughlin's Marauders]

Just an FYI;

 

I moved from Detroit to Seattle in 1990. We drove the whole I-90 thing and it was 2500 miles and took 5 days. It could probably be done much faster, but you probably won't have time for many caches.

 

Plan on the drive taking a week, and have fun on the way.

[+Bull Moose]

Just an FYI;

 

I moved from Detroit to Seattle in 1990. We drove the whole I-90 thing and it was 2500 miles and took 5 days.

5 days? Dang.

When I moved from Madison, WI to Seattle we did 2000 miles of I-90 in 3 days in a Uhaul. If you've ever driven a Uhaul through the Rocky Mountains of Columbia River gourge, you'll know that you spend a great deal of time going 30 miles an hour.

 

If you take 5 or 6 days from Detroit with about 12 hrs between starting and stopping you should have plenty of time for a little caching.

[+Willapa]

I did Philadelphia to Seattle in 3 days. Seventeen+ hours a day, no Uhaul, but I did it solo. Thank goodness for the time changes and summer daylight hours. Day one - Philly to Madison, day two- Madison to Wixaub, MT, day 3 - Wixaub to Everett. I don't recommend this itinerary to anyone.

[+paul2tele]

My family drove a rented motorhome from Seattle to Philly in 1984 straight through - 68.5 hours. Left on 12/20, made it there for Xmas with the cousins. Four drivers (I pulled all the overnight shifts) and my then 15 year old sister in the upper bunk with her headphones on the whole time.

 

I just came back from Tahoe last week - 890 miles in 15.5 hours. No time for caches on that leg (I did get a few on previous days). I can't imagine doing that for three days straight, I was pretty wasted.

[nolenator]

In the late eighties I moved from Ashland, NH to Seattle, WA. I did it in 2 1/2 days with only 8 hours of sleep at a cheap hotel. A snow storm and a 720 spin about 4 hours into the trip almost ended it. Be careful. Peace, Nolenator

[+Contagion]

The plan isn't to spend a lot of time cacheing. We're driving pretty much straight through. I've heard that there are a lot of rest stop caches so I thought I might target just those and make them challanging by limiting ourselves to 10 minutes searching.

 

It's a good excuse to stop and stretch your legs at many rest stops, but not spend a lot of time sidetracking off our route.

[+Contagion]

Once you get a collection of caches (by whatever means) you can publish them in a bookmark list. Although I have not created one myself yet.

 

Bookmarks

Thanks! THat's exactly what I was thinking of!

[+GeoRoo]

Anyone that's done any traveling and tried to work with pocket queries (PQ's) can see how a directional option would be a huge asset to Geocaching.com I don't think anything has been worked out yet. In the past I've done a filtered search for caches of less than 2-2 and gone out 250 miles. GSAK can be used to filter further. It's a long process and the limitation of 5 PQ's a day further hampers it. Good luck