Geocoins

I have released a few of my own geocoins into the wild and they have come up missing.  Now I don’t know if the finders of these coins are new and don’t know what to do with a geocoin, or they think they are a prize.  I would love to put more coins out but I am sure they will come up missing.  I’ll keep watching and maybe they were picked up by travelers that have not logged their finds.

I did run across a guy that had taken photos of his geocoins and enlarged them and glued them on a plastic coin of sorts.  You can log it and get the icon and pass it along down the road to the next cache.  If it gets lost, you just make a new one and release it back into the wild.  I think that is what I am going to do with my geocoins!  I will glue them to some poker chips so the will have the “feel” of a coin and maybe this will work.  I think I will give it a try and see how it will work.  I’ll keep you posted on what happens.

The weather is getting cooler and I am ready to do some geocaching.  NidoMio and I headed to Ft. Smith the other day and found about 18 caches for the day.  Two of the caches were real tough and took some time to find.  I am glad to see Ft. Smith cachers placing more caches out in the area.  I do like to pick up the easy park and grab caches, but I do enjoy a good hunt.  My next post I will give you some more tips on what you can do with GSAK.

-mark

Jesus discovers Green Jeep TB

I don’t have much “faith” in this Jeep contest, but you can help me see the light by voting for this Jeep Discovery photo.  I don’t ever remember of any posting of the winners names, so if this person wins a GPS I am sure I will know about it.  So help out MaddLove win a GPS.  Check out the link!

http://www.geocaching.com/track/log.aspx?LUID=00cccda3-0b64-484c-8829-30b454b34381

Thanks!

-mark

GSAK - the geocaching tool

I think most geocachers now days do paperless caching one way or another.  With used PDA’s on E-bay for just a few bucks, there is one to fit every budget.  I use a Handspring Visor that runs the Palm Operating system and you can find one on ebay for under 20 bucks.  What is great about these PDA’s is the fact that they run for months on two AAA batteries which are available from any store while you are out caching.  They are not color screens, but that is why they last so long!  Color screens take more juice and don’t last as long.  The average color PDA will last about 8 hours of use till it needs a recharge.  These little monochrome displays will last for months before needing new batteries.  You can use rechargeable batteries if you like, but they don’t last as long while the unit is powered off.

So with your new PDA you have purchased off of Ebay, you will need to go to the manufacture’s web site to get the latest drivers for your operating system.  You will need to download you a copy of Geocaching Swiss Army Knife to get your geocaching data to your PDA.  To get LOC and GPX files to use in GSAK, you need a premium membership at Geocaching.com.  One other small program will be needed is Cachemates for the Palm operating system.  With Cachemates loaded on your new PDA, you can run a query to your specific area and the kind of caches you want at Geocaching.com.  These will be emailed to you and you download them to your computer or laptop, unzip them and you are ready to load them into GSAK.

GSAK will allow you to set up different databases and use them as you wish.  I have regular query’s that run on Thursdays so I am ready to go geocaching on the weekend.  I never know where I might be going caching, so I have a database for HOME – those caches near my home, Ft. Smith, and Little Rock.  My older GPS will only hold about 500 waypoints, so if I just load 500 from my home area, I might miss some of the caches in Little Rock.  So with these query’s loaded into my laptop I have access to them on the road and I can load them to my PDA and GPS when I need to.  This is just one way you can have the information about the caches in your area without having to miss a geocache because you don’t have the info.  If you don’t have a PDA, at least you have your laptop and you can read about the cache even without a internet connection!  Now how cool is that!  Remember the files you downloaded?  They have all the cache’s webpages there too!  GSAK uses this info in your database so you can look up info on the cache.  I’ll post more tips on GSAK my next post.  Happy caching!