Caches along a route

Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2006 6:52 am

What happens when you take a long road trip to cache in a distance city? You throw out all sorts of suggestions and ideas. Team Honeybunnies and I went to Ococomowoc yesterday - yes, in the cold and snow - to do puzzle caches.

Here's one of the ideas ....

There is a lot of interest in how to select caches along a route. Generally, it's for when the person is on a road trip to somewhere else, but would like to have some caches to do along the way.

The process of coming up with the finished list can be quite timely, and not having a knowledge of local conditions, might be complicated by all sorts of things.

So, what about local cachers creating (and maintaining!) public bookmarks that would list caches along a particular route?

This process would serve a couple of purposes.

It would certainly help travellers not familiar with the area.

It could be used for advertisements purposes - such as WGA saying, Hey, look what we offer!

It could be used to hi-lite particular caches.

A prime example already exists with the Yellowstone Trail series.

[This message has been edited by marc_54140 (edited 02-20-2006).]

[This message has been edited by marc_54140 (edited 02-20-2006).]

Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2006 11:15 am

An interesting concept. The problem I see is that each person has their own idea of what "along a route" means. For instance, when we go from from home to Indianapolis, I do a filter on all the caches within a certain distance of the exits along I-94 and I-65, excluding those exits in the Chicago area. Would anyone else want to use this filter/bookmark list? I kinda doubt it, but you never know. (BTW, if you do this filter, you will find several "Ammo boxes sitting in plain view by the roadside for multiple years without getting muggled" caches...very weird)

I am guessing the most useful would be caches within 1 mile of the interstate highway exits. (Anyone that intentionally travels the non-interstate highways to find more caches doesn't need our help.) As you might guess, this is going to bring in a large number of park and ride caches, TB hotel caches, tourist trap/semi-commercial caches, etc., but if people want that, it would be simple enough to do it. Are you going to coordinate the project, Marc?

Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2006 12:02 pm

OK, here is a test list I threw together. Since I already had all these caches in my database, it only took about 20 minutes. Is this what you had in mind?

Caches along I-94 from the Hale interchange to the Illinois border

Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2006 2:46 pm

Your sample is getting there.

I would assume if this works out, there would be a standard distance used by all.

And 'back roads' should not be ignore. A nice driving tour around the countryside could be useful.

Joined: 2003-09-10 Posts: 1263 Location: Bristol WI

GSAK does this fairly easily though it's arc-filter function.

The problem with storing a database is that caches change daily.

The only time I have run into trouble is places where there are 10 overpasses criss-crossing in every direction (Milwaukee).

Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2006 4:06 pm

quote:
Originally posted by marc_54140:
Your sample is getting there.

I would assume if this works out, there would be a standard distance used by all.

And 'back roads' should not be ignore. A nice driving tour around the countryside could be useful.

This is what I was trying to get at. Each person will have a different idea of what roads should be covered. The appeal of doing the interstates is that everyone (with a small number of exceptions) uses the interstate system to travel distance in a car. Now, if you are talking about from Appleton to Madison, or some other specific route where no interstate exits, there is obviously some value, so we should probably include 151 from Green Bay to Madison, 51 from Wausau to Hurley, 29 from Green Bay to Eau Claire, 53 from Eau Claire to Superior and maybe 2 from Hurley to Superior. That is, highway routes that someone would reasonably take when traveling through Wisconsin. Now, you could also do a second set of scenic drives through various places, but I would think those would need to be hand constructed, rather than generated with a filter, and would require that the creator actually have found the caches on the route. (I have only found 5 of the 16 on my particular list.) Just my thoughts.

Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2006 4:10 pm

quote:
Originally posted by Cathunter:
The only time I have run into trouble is places where there are 10 overpasses criss-crossing in every direction (Milwaukee).

The secret in cities is to use the POINTS filter, rather than the arc filter, and specify the exits. If I change the filter on my list to arc, I will also pick up "Oak Creek Tiny Park Tour", which is within a mile of the interstate, but not within a mile of an exit.

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 8:16 pm

i've never used the point or arc filter. can you give easy instructions on usage?
i have followed the plan of download to gsak, import to mapsource, remove anything not wanted, import back to gsak, and voila--just the caches along the area I chose

Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2006 4:15 pm

quote:
Originally posted by marc_54140:
So, what about local cachers creating (and maintaining!) public bookmarks that would list caches along a particular route?

Have you tried the geocaching add-in for Google Earth? Shows caches in the vicinity of your current zoom...

Steve K

Joined: 2003-09-10 Posts: 1263 Location: Bristol WI

quote:
Originally posted by djwini:
i've never used the point or arc filter. can you give easy instructions on usage?

http://forums.groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=101714&view=findpost&p=1558228

Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2006 6:26 pm

the way I have found to do caches along a certain route is using google earth with the geocaching plugin.
when you click each cache in google earth, the popup box gives you the option to either view online or bookmark it. after bookmarking all the caches we decide to do, I just go to manage bookmarks on geocaching.com and have them send me a pocket query of the bookmark list I created. the nice thing about the bookmark list you can always have them send you another pocket query closer to when you leave so it is easy to update.
I open these planned trips pocket query in gsak as another database so the waypoints are not always in my gpsr.