Historical Topographic Maps

Many of us old-timey cachers, who have been caching since the pre-smartphone era, latched on to this hobby as a result of a pre-existing love of the outdoors. Most of us already had recreational GPS receiver devices that we used for navigating through remote hiking, biking and/or 4x4 trails. When geocaching came along, it just gave us just one more excuse to break out the ol' GPSr.

Of course, most GPSr's back then did not have built-in background maps, so we still had to rely more heavily on the beloved USGS TOPO map to keep ourselves from getting lost. As such, many of us have acquired quite a collection of TOPO maps over the year, myself included.

If you grew up with a, some might call it sick, fondness for TOPO maps, then you might be interested to know that the USGS is converting all of their historical printed topographic quadrangles to an electronic format and making them available for download. This will be a great way to see how much has changed in your area of interest over the years, if at all, as these maps include such wonderful detail. I know I'm looking forward to seeing the railroad alignment that used to run through my neck of the woods long before I arrived here. There is no longer any physical evidence that it ever existed. The only clue I've had up until now, ironically, is from a geocache: Eastport.


Cache On!

Pocket Query Wish List

For me, pocket queries are the greatest thing since sliced bread, and the main reason I cough up my hard-earned $30 each year to maintain my Groundspeak premium membership. Whether it's a pocket query along a route, of my bookmarks, within a 10-mile radius of my home or any location I plan to visit; the ability to create a list of up to 1,000 caches meeting any search criteria and instantly load them into my GPS receiver is one of my favorite aspects of geocaching (besides the actual outdoor part).

As great as PQ's are, there are a couple of nagging issues that drive me crazy, some of which may only pertain to a small percentage of people that geocache the way I do - using a non-wireless Garmin GPS device (GPSmap 60CSx), and an iPodTouch running the geocaching app.:

(1) The Search Radius
This is primarily an iPodTouch end user complaint. It's great that you can generate pocket queries containing up to 1,000 caches, which is the most I can load onto my Garmin device. But having a list of 1,000 caches in one pocket query set up for off-line use on my iPodTouch is a bit unwieldy. It takes forever to scroll through the whole list to pull up the info. for one specific cache.

That's why I like to break up my pocket queries into manageable amounts; say 500 caches each, or less. This is easy enough to do for caches along a route or bookmark PQ's. But it is impossible to do for a list of caches I haven't found within a 10 mile radius of my home - my most frequently used PQ.  Coincidentally, there are typically right around 1,000 caches that I haven't found within that radius of my home.

What I would love to do is to be able to set up one PQ that lists all my not-found caches within a 5 mile radius (which I can do), and then a 2nd PQ that lists all of the not-found caches within a distance covering between 5 and 10 miles from my home. The current PQ search options do not allow for this:

(2) Why no United States?
The other thing that has always bothered me is why there isn't a United States option in the list of countries to search within?

This would come in very handy, for example, for those of us working on one of the many Jasmer Challenge caches, which requires that you log at least one cache that was placed in every month back to the start of Geocaching (May, 2000). I would love to generate a PQ showing me all the active caches in the United States that were placed in the year 2000, of which there are very few. The only way I can do that now is to create a separate PQ for each state, rather than one PQ for the entire US. Quite annoying.

Other than that, I can find very little to complain about when it comes to pocket queries, especially considering the alternative: loading caches into a GPSr one at a time.

Cache On!

Win A Barely Coveted Prize

Every so often, Groundspeak runs a caption creation contest on its blog site, Latitude 47. The current installment asks brave souls to create a caption for this image captured at the recent Groundspeak Block Party:

Think you might have a winning caption for this image? Go to this week's blog post to submit your entry. Or, if you want to see what other people have submitted so far, you can do so at the same site. You can also vote for your favorite caption.

And the barely coveted prize for the best entry? A trackable from the Geocaching Block Party.

Good luck, and Cache On!

Benchmark Hunting Tool

A lot of geocachers also enjoy trying to locate benchmarks, in addition to "regular" geocaching. Like geocaches, there are probably several benchmarks, or survey markers, near you. You can search the National Geodetic Survey database for local benchmarks here.

I recently came across this nice little survey marker searching tool that uses the Google Earth plug-in to map benchmarks for any given query. First, center the map in your desired location. Then, Under the NGS Control Station heading, select the "Query Setup" radio button. Filter your search if you like in the dialog box that pops up, and/or just click "OK". The search will return a display of all the different types of control points within a fixed radius of your search location. A useful tool to add to your geocaching/benchmarking arsenal.

Cache On!

Challenge Caches Off To A Challenging Start

The build up to the launch of Challenge Caches ended this week as Geocaching.com modified the website on Thursday to include a new section called, Geocaching Challenges. These are the long-awaited cache types meant to replace Virtual Caches. There is no container to find or log to sign. A cacher simply creates a Challenge Cache by "daring" other cachers to either take a picture of themselves with something, or perform a specific task. More information is available on the FAQ page.

Apparently the reception has been less than stellar, which prompted this blog post from Bryan Roth, Groundspeak co-founder, asking people to, "give Challenges a chance". It seems that not only have people not swarmed to Challenge Caches, but significant numbers of long-time cachers are complaining about them as they don't seem to represent the spirit of geocaching. This is consistent with a lot of comments I saw on Twitter, summed up by a tweet from one cacher that said, "if there's no box to find and I don't need a GPSr, it's not a geocache."

I checked the Challenges near me, and most of them have already received more poor ratings than positive ones. Too many poor ratings, and the Challenges are automatically removed by Groundspeak.

We'll have to wait and see if Challenge Caches eventually take off, or die a quick death. I can see how this might appeal to the new, smartphone-wielding geocaching crowd, which makes this a wise business move on Groundspeak's part as a means to attract new cachers. But me personally, I fall in to the old-timey cacher category who likes using his non-wireless Garmin GPSmap 60CSx device out in the woods to locate Tupperware and ammo cans.

Cache (and Challenge) On!

A Busy Week

Lots of happenings in the geosphere this week, including:

1. Geocaching.com Introduces "Challenge Caches"

On their Latitude 47 blog site this week, Groundspeak announced that "Challenge Caches" are coming soon, and provided us with this interesting, but not completely informative, video:



Like most who have seen this, I'm not quite sure what it means. Is this the long-awaited replacement for Virtual Caches? Possibly. But why call them "Challenge Caches" when an informal category of challenge caches has existed for years, including the likes of all the Quad, DeLorme, County and Fizzy Challenges? I guess we'll find out soon enough.

2. GSAK Version 8.0 Beta Release

The good people at GSAK (aka, Clyde) released version 8 in beta form this week. This is/will be a significant upgrade from the current version and includes many new features, the biggest being:

• Increased functionality by leveraging the new Groundspeak api
• Support for custom data (virtually unlimited number of fields)
• A newer, more modern look and feel 

The first bullet item above is significant in that the GSAK program will now be able to interact directly with geocaching.com, giving you the ability to pull down cache data directly and instantly from the website into your GSAK database. The final release of version 8 will be a paid upgrade, but prices have not been announced yet.

If you are interested in running the beta program without losing your current version, you can install the v8 beta in a separate directory. There is no charge for downloading the beta product. Learn more at gsak.net.

3. Geocaching App for iOS 4.5.2 Released

A free update to the Geocaching iOS App is now available in the App Store. This release fixes a number of bugs including (1) the time/date bug which caused some logs to be posted "tomorrow" (a particular annoyance that I've discussed before), (2) searches returning incorrect cache sizes, and (3) a User Notes display problem.

4. Goodbye MapSource

GPS Tracklog reported this week that Garmin will no longer support its MapSource program, as they focus development efforts on Base Camp instead. Like a lot of long-time Garmin GPS users, this news is tough to swallow. I've tried Base Camp a few times, but it runs so slowly that I always end up coming back to MapSource. I guess it's time to make the permanent switch to Base Camp and hope that Garmin addresses the performance issues.

Cache On!

Pluggin' Away

As life continues to get in the way of geocaching this year, my find rate has dropped below 1 per day. As depressing as that is, I've managed to keep my caching spirits up by focusing on filling in my caching calendar. So far, I've been doing well with that goal, and now have every month filled in since the start of this year, with the exception of February, thanks to leap day.

If I stay on task, I should have 365 out of 366 days filled in by December 9th of this year. Then it's just a matter of making sure I don't let February 29, 2012 go by without finding a cache; or it'll be a long wait until the next opportunity.

Well, gotta go. Today is another cache day to fill in.

Cache On!