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It
is fun to hear what techniques and technology cachers use
to find caches while on a big road trip. With some encouragement
from a friend, I thought I'd share some memories from a recent
trip from Sturgeon, MO to Albuquerque, NM. Maybe someone else
can glean a few tips and tricks to use on their next big trip.
Or maybe someone else will be inspired to share their ideas
as well.
Geocaching
has completely changed how we plan a trip. We used to find
an internet mapping program that would allow us to find the
fastest route or maybe the shortest one. Once in a while we'd
inquire about the most scenic route. However, now we try to
find the most reasonable route with the most caches along
the way! Our planning has evolved since we first started caching,
and I'm sure we'll keep finding new ways to search out cache-rich
areas.
Before
our first geocaching road trip, we used the geocaching.com
search by zip code feature. We entered a few zip codes of
some major cities along the way, and then looked at each cache,
one by one, to determine if it was too far off the beaten
path and looked like one we'd like to stop for. Once we determined
that we wanted to stop at a cache, we'd print out the listing
and place it in a folder. It was tedious and time consuming.
Some other downfalls of this method is that we'd have lots
of printouts (100+) to sort through, we weren't alerted to
any recent problems with caches, and we often had many printouts
left over at the end of the trip. Our scrap paper pile was
growing and growing.
GSAK
to the Rescue
One
of our standing jokes comes from the KOB-TV segment featuring
geocaching where Mindy Mizell states that geocaching is free...you
only have to purchase a receiver which can cost $100 to $250
for a basic unit. For us it didn't stop there. We decided
we needed a digital camera in order to post some pictures.
Then we needed a laptop - we got tired of waiting several
days before we could get to a computer with internet access
to post our finds. Next we needed an inverter to power the
laptop while in the van. Plus there is the ever-increasing
transportation cost...but it has all been well worth it. Once
we purchased a laptop computer, we installed the Geocaching
Swiss Army Knife (GSAK) program to organize our caches. No
longer did we have to print out cache listings. We could save
a file of the caches we wanted for a trip and load them all
into a database. Now we were paperless and had the ability
to quickly sort through our potential caches. But I still
hadn't discovered one of the most valuable premium member
features - Pocket Queries. We were still populating our GSAK
database by viewing caches online, screening which ones we
wanted, and downloading one file at a time.
Pocket
Queries to the Rescue
I
won't even attempt to describe all the features of Pocket
Queries (PQs), but they're a great way to receive an e-mail
containing a file that has up to 500 caches that match most
any criteria you specify such as: 500 caches closest to my
home coordinates that are currently active and I haven't already
found. I have a query like this that I receive every Friday
morning. That way I have up-to-date information ready for
the weekend. On our trip home I created five PQs trying to
cover our route. The town centers were Jefferson City, MO;
Springfield, MO; Fort Smith, AR, Pharoah, OK, and Oklahoma
City, OK. I setup these queries to run the morning we were
planning to leave, and loaded them early that morning. They
contained over 1700 caches. A picture of them all loaded into
MapSource, our Garmin mapping program, is shown in the file
Unfiltered.jpg. As you can tell from looking at this overview,
there are so many caches that you can't see the forest for
the trees.
Arc/Line
Filter to the Rescue
Next
I used a very impressive feature of GSAK - Arc/Poly Filtering.
I created what Garmin's MapSource program calls a Route, shown
in the file Route.jpg. We picked out what hotels we were going
to stop at ahead of time based on our criteria - indoor pool
and wireless internet. We also put in a waypoint for our planned
stop in Mansfield, MO - home of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Our
girls are big Little House on the Prairie fans. We also put
in a waypoint for Clarksville, AR. This town was out of our
way, but when we were looking at possible return routes home,
I saw a boatload of caches pop up in this fairly small town.
I began zooming in and in and soon discovered that this is
one of the densest areas of caches I have ever seen. So we
decided it was worth swinging out of our way in order to visit
this wonderful little town.
There
are several steps involved in creating a file from the MapSource
route and loading it into GSAK. I had never done it before,
but I followed some instructions I found online and everything
went smoothly. I included all geocaches within 5 miles of
our planned route. I exported the filtered database to MapSource
that can be seen in the file 5MileFilter.jpg. (I also filtered
out high difficulty and high terrain caches.) This reduced
the number of caches from over 1700 to just over 400. They
can't all be seen at the level of zoom shown in the picture,
especially near Clarksville. We downloaded all these waypoints
into our GPSr. As we drove along, we used the GPSr to identify
nearby caches. We used MapSource to verify they were convenient
for us to access, and used GSAK to view their listings to
make sure they were doable in the amount of time we had. What
a great use of technology!
41
caches in a day
Our
personal best day for cache finds was the day we drove to
Clarksville. Some may read this and wonder about my sanity,
but I can hardly describe the excitement I had driving into
Clarksville when I looked at my GPSr's screen that was completely
filled with nearby caches. There was one walking trail that
had a cache nearly every 0.1 miles. One of my favorite moments
of the day was when we were driving to our hotel. We stopped
at a rest area that had 3 caches. Tricia called the Plugge
family as we pulled into the rest area, so they could tell
when I hopped out to get the first cache. Within a short time
I was back reporting that I found all three, and they were
still on the phone. We hadn't told them how many we had found
so far that day, but they had to be wondering given that we
found three within about five minutes. If we could just keep
up that rate for a few hours! We found 88 caches on our way
home, so we consider the trip a great success. As they say,
if you're driving just to get from point A to point B, you're
missing the point.
GPSr,
Digital Camera, Laptop Computer, GSAK, Pocket Queries, Routes,
Arc/Poly Filters, and a little luck can make for a great trip.
I'd be interested to hear any other tips, tricks or techniques
you use to hunt down caches on your road trip.
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