Scheduled Caching

Well, we got back from our little vacation yesterday. I racked up 3000 miles on the car. As I stated before, it was a family trip and geocaching would be limited. I ended putting 2708 caches into the GPSr and my Palm. I was hoping that if I was in an area, I'd be able to see if there was a cache nearby. So you'd think with that much info at my fingertips, I'd find a lot, right? Nope. I found only 2.

I was expecting to find most of my caches at rest stops. I was a little surprised that the majority of the rest stops didn't have any caches! I thought those would be prime cache locations. I guess not.

Instead, I ended up getting a couple of LPC's in LA area. One was in a grocery store parking lot, and another was in a mall parking lot. Say what you like about LPC's, but when you are in a pinch, hurting for numbers, or just need a quick fix, LPC's are where they're at. If it wasn't for LPC's, I would have found nothing on this trip.

So my vacation was lacking in the geocaching department. I'm a little disappointed despite the fact we had a great time on the trip. I just wish I could have gone out and grabbed a few more. I guess next time, I'll have to schedule some caching time for myself. Otherwise I won't get any done. Oh well. Lesson learned.

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!