Tuesday, June 26, 2007

How to Hold More Than 500 Caches in your GPS

My Garmin Venture Cx will only hold 500 waypoints. But this trip I'm taking, I had 2700 waypoints to load! What to do! Well, Garmin has a program called POI Loader. Basically it makes custom waypoints. These custom waypoints are saved on the MicroSD card, so you can have as many as the card will hold. It took a little looking, but I figured out how to do it. Here's what I found:


In GSAK

  1. Go to View - Add/Delete Columns
  2. Uncheck everything except Longitude and Latitude.
  3. Select TWO other data columns that you would like included on the GPS (I chose Waypoint Name and Container)
  4. Click OK
  5. Make sure "LOCK FIRST COLUMN" is unchecked (upper right above the first column)
  6. Rearrange the columns in the following order; LONGITUDE, LATTITUDE, Data 1 (I chose Waypoint Name), Data 2 (I chose Container).
  7. Save the View by going to View - Save Current View and choose a name
  8. Go to File - Export - CSV or Text
  9. For filename, browse to a place on your C: drive that you'd like to save your file to. When you name your file, be sure to add the extension (.csv)
  10. Make sure that USE DEFAULTS is checked.
  11. Click Generate

In POI Loader
  1. Make sure your GPS is on and hooked up to the computer.
  2. Launch POI Loader
  3. Scroll through the Find Device
  4. On the next screen, you can Load New POIs on your Device or Remove Previous POIs. Delete any custom POI's if needed.
  5. Choose Load New POIs and click Next
  6. Browse to the directory GSAK created your .csv file to.
  7. Make sure Express Mode is selected.
  8. Click Next and your Custom POI's will be loaded!

That's It! One more mystery solved!

Monday, June 25, 2007

Ready for a Road Trip

It's been a busy last few weeks. We are preparing to go on vacation to CA. So we've been getting all of our ducks in a row, including getting our garden and yard in shape before taking off for 2 weeks. What does that mean for me? Yup....no geocaching! :(

Well, we're taking off tomorrow for our long road trip. Last week, I got our itinerary and started mapping our our route in Google Earth. I want to do a pocket query along a route. It looks as if the pocket query can only do 500 caches, but I wanted more. I wanted as many as I can have in my GPS so that if we stop somewhere along the way, I can look to see if they're any caches nearby. So I ended up breaking my trip from Billings, MT to LA, CA into 8 segments to look for caches .5 miles along my route. I ended up with 2400 caches! Hopefully I'll find a few in the reststops along the way. I also did some pocke queries on the locations I'll be staying. So perhaps I can grab a few on an evening stroll.

I'm looking forward to it. This isn't a caching trip. It's a family vacation with our schedule jammed packed. So all my caching will be done if I happen to be at the right time at the right place. Hopefully I'll bag a few. Wish me luck!

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Birthday Caching

Yesterday was my birthday! So, naturally that means I get to take the day off work and do some geocaching! I went out at 9am and cached for about 3 hours. There was a travel bug that I wanted to get my hands on located on the Rims. Plus there are a bunch of caches up there too. So I thought that would be a great place to target. What a great area. I haven't been up here in 7-8 years. They have really nice paved paths. I think I'm going to bring my family up here in the near future.

Anyway, the first 25 minutes were a bust. The first few caches were beyond the Rims and in the valley. Since I have no interest in plummeting to the bottom, I had to write those off. But it wasn't long until I found the caches I could get to. I think I ended up logging 6 new caches. I probably attempted 10 or so. There were some that were in a dangerous area, a puzzle cache, or I had no interest in getting to (micro in the woods don't appeal to me).

I had a really great time. It was only 3 hours. But for a lunch time cacher, that is a very successful day. I brought my camera with me and took some pictures of some wildflowers.

Since the Rims are all sandstone, the trees sometimes have a tough time finding their rooting. I saw this crazy tree practically growing sideways.

I was also able to get a couple of pictures to use for my ginormous travel bug I'm playing host to. I'm going to doctor the pix up a bit in photoshop to make it a bit more fun before moving on.