I'm curious as to what procedures most cachers use to find a cache.I do mine just one step above the cavemen(I have a printer)they I believe had to use cave drawings.But seriously,I print out the pages,with the clue decrypted,hand load the info into my etrex.Depending on the circumstances I may or maynot use the clue,micros I do,and if I'm trying to do a lot of caches in a day I do.On the other hand if doing a ammo can,and not in a hurry I love to find it without a clue.

Discussing this with a friend the other day ,he feels you should look for the cache a minimum of of an hour or so ,before using the clue.He uses his mapping programs to pin point the cache,before he ever goes to look for it.Which I feel takes away from the hunt.

My cache Vic's Challenge is all about the clue,I had the clue first then designed the cache around it.Lots of micros i've done are that way,the clue makes the cache.

What are your thoughts. Vic

Let me start off by saying that being the Bob Dylan fan that I am I quickly caught onto the clue... the cache however didn't fall so easily into place... we looked everywhere the w.... would b.... (note that i'm not saying the whole words so i dont ruin the clue) we even looked around the flag, even though its 90' away from the coords. we counted bolts and nuts, felt cracks and crevasississ followed the wind, looked in the wind, broke wind... so anyways to answer your question,

i go paperless, i use my laptop with all the caches loaded into GSAK. I have a GPSr for my laptop and one for me. I've gotten to the point where I get so close to the cache that I don't even use the handheld gps to find the cache. There are a few caches that I spend over hours looking for, but I hate to give up, it drives me nuts leaving cache behind, usually when I'm in dire need (or i just want to find the cache quickly) will i use the clue.


I'm curious as to what procedures most cachers use to find a cache.I do mine just one step above the cavemen(I have a printer)they I believe had to use cave drawings.But seriously,I print out the pages,with the clue decrypted,hand load the info into my etrex.Depending on the circumstances I may or maynot use the clue,micros I do,and if I'm trying to do a lot of caches in a day I do.On the other hand if doing a ammo can,and not in a hurry I love to find it without a clue.

Discussing this with a friend the other day ,he feels you should look for the cache a minimum of of an hour or so ,before using the clue.He uses his mapping programs to pin point the cache,before he ever goes to look for it.Which I feel takes away from the hunt.

My cache Vic's Challenge is all about the clue,I had the clue first then designed the cache around it.Lots of micros i've done are that way,the clue makes the cache.

What are your thoughts. Vic

Well, we gave up paper over a year ago and never looked back! I picked up a PalmIII (http://electronics.search.ebay.com/Palm-III_PDAs-Handheld-PCs_W0QQcatrefZC12QQfrppZ50QQfsooZ1QQfsopZ1QQmaxre cordsreturnedZ300QQsacatZ3729) on eBay (http://www.ebay.com) real cheap (around $30) and Cachemate (http://www.smittyware.com/) ($8) and can now carry 500 updated cache pages in my pocket. With it I have the option of decrypting the clue quickly if I need it or am in a rush, like you do. I like it when the clues are a little vague, and just help narrow down the search a bit to a rock or stump, eye level or ground level, etc.

If I'm by myself and time is not a factor, I think an hour is about the limit, although the longer it took me to get there, the longer I will look. The kids used to like the hunt more when thay were little, but as teenagers they usually have something else they would rather be doing than caching. And of course, if the kids are unhappy, Donna is unhappy. :) She's a little more patient if it's just the two of us out.

I will use USAPhotoMaps (http://jdmcox.com/) to get a rough idea of the lay of the land; swampy, road/trail to take, which side of the water to be on, etc. When I get to the general vicinity, I'll follow the pointer on the GPS until about 100' away, then watch the distance go down. When it starts going back up again, I'll turn 90 degrees and walk back and forth in that direction. Keep repeating ad infinitum until I'm as close to zero as I can get. Then I will sort of spiral out from there, watching the distance now and then to see if it bottoms out at another location.

AHHH!!! The patented Hiram Natuilus searching techniqe! many often confuse this with being lost and wandering around in circles, but only a professional geocaching eye can tell the difference!:D :D :D


I'll turn 90 degrees and walk back and forth in that direction. Keep repeating ad infinitum until I'm as close to zero as I can get. Then I will sort of spiral out from there, watching the distance now and then to see if it bottoms out at another location.

This is just me but I ALWAYS use the hints I don't care how easy it is. Plus, just make sure if you do use a Palm make sure to update it before heading out. It sucks to not find the cache and then return home to see that it was archived or disabled. Paperless is the way to go and with GSAK and Cachemate thats all you'll ever need. Sure beats printing out all those cache pages and besides it saves a tree and saves on ink costs. Each to his own though, whatever floats your boat I say. It's not how you cache but if you are enjoying yourself and relishing the outdoors and all the beautiful places that caching brings you to, that's all that counts.

When I get to the general vicinity, I'll follow the pointer on the GPS until about 100' away, then watch the distance go down. When it starts going back up again, I'll turn 90 degrees and walk back and forth in that direction. Keep repeating ad infinitum until I'm as close to zero as I can get. Then I will sort of spiral out from there, watching the distance now and then to see if it bottoms out at another location.

geez! that made me dizzy just reading it :D

And hey, you can even surf the web on some Palms -- I'm typing this response on my Sony Clié. :D

I agree that paperless is the way to go,if anyone comes across a good deal let me know.But remember you may be responsible for teaching me how to use it.

Iif anyone comes across a good deal let me know.

Here's a couple I see on eBay (http://www.ebay.com):

Used Palm III, 2MB (http://cgi.ebay.com/PALM-III-HANDHELD-PDA-JC-6-20-06_W0QQitemZ120011347768QQihZ002QQcategoryZ38331QQ rdZ1QQcmdZViewItem) (like mine, should hold about 500 waypoints)
Another Used Palm III, 4 MB (http://cgi.ebay.com/used-Palm-III-USE-2-TIMES-GREAT-GADGET-ORGANIZER_W0QQitemZ120011334936QQihZ002QQcategoryZ 38331QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem) (should hold over 1000 waypoints)
Here's a 3-Com Palm III 2 MB (http://cgi.ebay.com/3Com-Palm-III-with-everything_W0QQitemZ120011448766QQihZ002QQcategory Z38331QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem) for under $10
Used Palm V, 2 MB (http://cgi.ebay.com/PALM-V-PDA-Accessories_W0QQitemZ200009431041QQihZ010QQcategor yZ38331QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem) which I think is a little faster than the III but has rechargable batteries
Sony Clie, 8 MB (http://cgi.ebay.com/Sony-Clie-PEG-N610C-Palm-Pilot-PDA-Organizer-N-610C-V_W0QQitemZ250010449708QQihZ015QQcategoryZ38331QQr dZ1QQcmdZViewItem) has color screen and USB cable, which sends data much fasterThat should get you started. Of course, you know the risks of buying the stuff on eBay (http://www.ebay.com); it could not work properly when you get it. These units are probably at least 5-6 years old, and depending on the abuse they got, they could have loose solder joints on the boards that cause the unit to power off unexpectedly. But for the price, I think the risk is worth it.

They are really easy to use and the Cachemate (http://www.smittyware.com) software is as well. You will want to look into GSAK (http://www.gsak.net/) if you don't have it already as well. It's not hard at all to get everything set up and working right, and I don't mind walking you through it. :)

geez! that made me dizzy just reading it :D

LOL!! Remember as a kid where you'd go out on the lawn and spin around like crazy until you fell down? I must have been practicing for geocaching later on.... :D

I use the Palm also, but with Mobipocket instead of cachemate. For a few blissful weeks I had a Tungsten E2 that I bought new because I had fantasies of doing email and lots of other stuff. But the car was broken into and it was stolen before I could get around to it. They left cash & credit cards, a cell phone and the GPSr, but took the Palm. :mad: I'm still hoping they will pawn it or something stupid because it had identifying marks along with the serial number.

Anyway, I replaced it with a Palm M500 that was offered to me for $25.00 by someone from the GC.com forum. Once you go paperless, it is very hard to go back. I get very antsy waiting for paper to print, and I like to take a lot of pages with me so I can pick and choose when I get there. With the Palm, you can take 500 caches quicker than you can print one. I have forgotten how cachemate works, but with Mobi you can't see the hint accidentally. I try not to use the hint, except in Minnesota where we were being competitive.

We went paperless about a year ago and I can't imagine ever going back. I have come a long way from printed cache sheets, printed topo maps, and my Garmin 12. We are using GPX Sonar on an Pocket PC. Download the nearest 1000 unfound caches into the GPS and Pocket PC and in about 5 minutes we are out the door. We let the Garmin 60csx take care of the directions until we get close to the cache area, then we consult the map on the GPS, because the GPS will route you as close to the cache as possible on-road, but that isn't necessarily the best starting point. Once at the cache area I will generally search all the obvious spots first and work outward from there. On traditional caches I generally won't read the hint until I think I have exhausted all the possible hiding spots. However, on park and grab type caches I will often read the hint before I get out of the car, especially if there are a lot of muggles around.

We started out printing pages of caches until..... One blustery day this winter we were at Field of Ouch and had a bunch of pages, we were planning on doing on the dash. We parked the car on a very icy slippery parking lot and then we opened our doors at the same time :eek: !! Well the pages went flying out the window :mad: and we had to chase them down a very icy parking lot. We managed to recover all the pages which was a good thing :D or we would have had to go all the way home to print new pages.
We aquired an old Palm which works ok but you have to squeeze the sides of it sometimes to make the stylus work. But it sure beats paper!!!:) Oh Yeah and we lost the stylus so we use anything we can find that's pointy...sometimes we even use a stick of wood

Paperless is DEFINITELY the way to go. :D :D

And I think Cachemate will work on MANY older, cheaper Palm models, so paperless caching should not be out of the price range of most cachers.

:D :D

Yeah, paperless is way cool...I will say you have way more patience than me....25 min of looking, I break out the hint. 1 hour, generally I give up. (I get grumpy easily)

Yeah I am definitely going to need to upgrade soon...maybe for my birthday later this year. It's a bit time consuming manually entering all the coordinates into my eTrex...not to mention the ink I use printing the pages!

There is a free program at Geocaching.com , "EasyGPS" that allows you to send cache data to your GPS without all that hand entering. It is like GSAK but does not do as much and does not handle all the data that GSAK does. But you can save a lot of time entering as long as you have the data cable for your unit.

I highly recommend GSAK as the program of choice though.

There is a free program at Geocaching.com , "EasyGPS" that allows you to send cache data to your GPS without all that hand entering. It is like GSAK but does not do as much and does not handle all the data that GSAK does. But you can save a lot of time entering as long as you have the data cable for your unit.

I highly recommend GSAK as the program of choice though.

Thanks Sabby,

I just ordered the cable that goes with the eTrex from eBay so I can start using the EasyGPS program. It will make my geocaching life a bit easier.:D Thanks for the help!

Dave

:) Oh Yeah and we lost the stylus so we use anything we can find that's pointy...sometimes we even use a stick of wood

ah yes, there's nuthin' like a little New England ingenuity! :D

Sabby : There is a free program at Geocaching.com , "EasyGPS" that allows you to send cache data to your GPS without all that hand entering.

I use EasyGPS myself - I haven't tried GSAK, but I have to wonder what it could possibly do that EasyGPS doesn't :confused: (well, you mentioned support for more formats, but it perfectly supports the one format that matters to me :D ). To download waypoints, I literally just have to click "download waypoint", which opens EasyGPS and I only need to click "send". Two-click shopping, to borrow from Amazon's saying.


But you can save a lot of time entering as long as you have the data cable for your unit.

Almost all Garmin units have the same pinout on that funky round connector - From the notch clockwise, the first pin does rx (connect to DB9 pin 3), second for ground (p5), third for tx (p2), and never ever connect the fourth to anything. You can build your own with any old serial cable (I used one from a broken serial mouse until recently), a bag of tiny alligator clips from Radio Shack, and about five minutes of time.:cool:

Ah... Here we go, a nice neat diagram: http://www.tapr.org/~kh2z/Waypoint/Connections.htm (http://www.tapr.org/%7Ekh2z/Waypoint/Connections.htm)

I use EasyGPS myself - I haven't tried GSAK, but I have to wonder what it could possibly do that EasyGPS doesn't :confused:

The list of differences is much too big to post here... it's almost not fair to compare them. For starters, GSAK is designed to work with all the custom GC.com cache data, such as logs, hint, cache status, difficulties, container type, hider, hide date, TB's, etc, etc. GSAK's filtering capabilities are staggering: any field can be filtered on in combination with and or all other fields. It's very easy to set up a custom filter and save it for later recall. Let's say you want an easy caching weekend someplace to the north: set up a filter for all caches N, NE & NW that have difficulties less than 2, less than or equal to 1 DNF, and less than 30 miles from your home coordinates. Or if you are travelling from one cache to another, and would like all the caches that are less then 5 miles from the line that connects them, it's another simple filter. I can also filter by text, so if I'm heading to Portland I can search for all caches with the word "Baxter" in the description that I haven't found yet.

It will also maintain a list of your FTF's, the date you found a cache, and it lets you add notes and correct the coordinates (handy for puzzle caches). You can change the center point of your distance measurements which is handy if you're out camping, visiting or travelling. If has built-in links to all the popular mapping websites, and it's very easy to add your own link (I made one to USAPhotoMaps). For power users, the macro language is a bonus... you can make it do just about anything, from statistics on all the caches in the state to creating a custom web page listing all your finds.

It can also upload to most GPSr's as well as send the data to Cachemate (or other PDA s/w, I assume), so if you have all your caches filtered, it's two clicks to get them all to your GPSr and PDA. :cool:

And that's the rest of the story.....

I find that trying to live my caveman exsistance is getting harder and harder every day.My son saids dad you got to give up the old ways.Listening to you guys talk all this tech stuff makes me think he's probably right.I have tried to live without credit cards,checking accounts or banks period.I had to money in Cheryls account last week,it was the first time in 10 years I'd been in the bank.It gets harder every day to do things with cash.A girl at sears apologized to me for not knowing how to enter a cash transaction into the register.She had to get her manager.

Back when I smoked all the time I figured I wouldn't live long enough to have to worry about it.Now with this organic diet and all the exersise from geocaching I may have to get a credit card so I can purchase on ebay,sign up for GSAK,etc.What is the world coming to.Wally-world even has self check out !!!

What is the world coming to.Wally-world even has self check out !!!

Man, you should've seen my "happy dance" the day this happened in my town..."YES, I don't have to talk to the cashier about EVERY item i'm buying!"

vicbiker : It gets harder every day to do things with cash.

Don't give up! The day I can't use cash for almost everything, I'll start living like a hermit. :(

Cash transactions don't leave slips of paper with your number on them for people to steal. Cash transactions don't accidentally get overcharged after-the-fact. Cash transactions make it impossible to spend more than you have. Cash transactions don't leave a trail that companies like ChoicePoint aggregate without your knowledge or permission and sell to anyone that asks. :mad:

Cash transactions end with the transaction itself. :p


Wally-world even has self check out !!!

Ugh. I consider those things the single most insulting development in the retail world ever. Stores that put them in have effectively told their customers, "Our service sucks so bad, many of you would rather serve yourselves!" :rolleyes:. No. I can't even count the number of times I've gone into a store to see one overworked cashier with a line a mile long, with four totally empty self-checkout stations sitting there. When this happens, we all need to do what I do - Go to the service desk and demand they open another register. If they point to the self-checkout (which they always do), ask them how much a discount you get for saving them the cost of a cashier. I have yet to get a good answer to that. :cool:

And for the record - I bought my current GPS with cash, rather than online.

Wally-world even has self check out !!!

Ugh. I consider those things the single most insulting development in the retail world ever. Stores that put them in have effectively told their customers, "Our service sucks so bad, many of you would rather serve yourselves!" :rolleyes:. No. I can't even count the number of times I've gone into a store to see one overworked cashier with a line a mile long, with four totally empty self-checkout stations sitting there. When this happens, we all need to do what I do - Go to the service desk and demand they open another register. If they point to the self-checkout (which they always do), ask them how much a discount you get for saving them the cost of a cashier. I have yet to get a good answer to that. :cool:


Sheesh! You want low prices AND great service? LOL!

I love the self-checkouts because they almost ALWAYS gve you back brand new (or nearly new) $1 bills as change. Great for us "Where's Georgers". (Plus, think of all the marked bills you can put into circulation at one of those terminals!) :D :D

But then there's the time when RULOST2? and I decided to be "cute", and pressed the button for Spanish. Well, be had a wierd coupon we wanted to use, and the machine kept rejecting it. Needless to say, the poor supervisor couldn't tell what the problem was as all the prompts kept coming up in Spanish. We finally got through that experience, but learned our lesson! LOL!

But then there's the time when RULOST2? and I decided to be "cute", and pressed the button for Spanish.

Heheheheh... call me sadistic, but a couple times after I've finished checking out, I've pressed the French or Spanish button for the next person in line and then taken off. :p

Heheheheh... call me sadistic, but a couple times after I've finished checking out, I've pressed the French or Spanish button for the next person in line and then taken off. :p

Ooooh! I like that idea! :p :p

Hey,There may be kids reading this.LOL

Hey,There may be kids reading this.LOL

Not to worry...

The kids of Geocachers are all GREAT kids, and wouldn't do anything like this unless encouraged by their parents! (Wicked LOL!)

;) ;)