Discovering My Smartphone  by LostCheq  3/24/16

Sometimes one just has to observe and make changes in their lives.    On the recent trip to Texas with Racecarchick from Duluth, I learned how to use a valuable GeoTool almost extensively.   This was my iPhone for finding and logging geocaches.  Racecarchick uses her iPhone exclusively for geocaching, whereas I have always used a Garmin 450 or 650 GPS.

To prepare for the route down to Brenham, Texas, I prepared several query routes for each day of travel.  So this takes some pre-planning time to have these loaded to the GPS, maybe a print-out and map.   Well, shoot!  How cumbersome to review the hardcopy AND the small GPS screen to see the upcoming caches on the road, whereas the smartphone screen is flexible with the different maps one can immediately select and be flexible with instant searches to wider areas.   After about two days using the GPS, I just gave it up and used the phone.   Although we were using a Garmin NUVI for basic vehicle navigation, but could use either the GPS or iPhone for the coordinates.

Being a bit skeptical of how much data the phone would suck up on a shared 12GB plan, I was being rather conservative and closing the Geocaching App whenever I wasn’t using it.  But with the added handicap of our Hotel in Brenham losing its Wi-Fi function for the entire 3 days we stayed, the phone was critical to find and log our caches.   Even the lab caches were easy to log!  So I just gave up the worry of the data plan and would pay any extra needed if it came to that.

So I made the change and didn’t really use my GPS for the entire 2^nd half of the trip because now I really like the benefit of the smartphone for geocaching.   There was only once where the logs did not go through in the hills of the Ozarks and the log was put into a pending mode until the signal was stronger.

The best thing I found was the convenience of finding and immediately being able to log the cache.  I didn’t have to download a GPS file of my finds or write anything down, except for notes of virtuals or earthcaches.   For trackables I just saved this for when I was home, but took pictures on the iPhone instead of writing down the numbers.

Will I give up the Garmin?   Nope, not in Northern Wisconsin or remote areas!  Next, I’m going to explore and observe how I could use both together!   I’m still learning and will never stop observing for trying to improve my efficiency in geocaching.   Did I use up a large amount of shared data?  Nope, not even close with only .7GB used in 10 days. I also bought a selfie stick for the phone to extend my view into those tree holes or things beyond my view.

So I came away from this trip with a new outlook.  Sometimes it pays to observe the smartphone users and change our view on how we do things in our geocaching methods and ways.   If you are open to change, there always seems to be new tricks.