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Congratulations on a great milestone. In August we will reach 30 years. We look forward to reaching 37 years like you. We fell in love on the dance floor and we continue to stay in love as we geocache! Keep having fun and enjoy the precious years you have together.

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Congratulations. We seem to be following you in caches in Manitowoc, Green Bay and Appleton! We love seeing cachers we know having been to a location before us. It feels like we have run into you along the trail. Hope to see you again in person.

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Great idea Rebecca – finding a 4/4 for #400! We enjoyed reading your log and viewing the pictures. Maybe we’ll start posting pictures with our finds 😉

Great job with #400, and until recently almost all of them with an iPhone. How do you like using that new Garmin?

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Great question Brian. I’d delete. If we could get credit for a find merely by being nearby, those 5/5s would have a lot more finds and it makes the ratings somewhat meaningless. If I hid a tree-climbing cache and someone emailed me with a good reason asking permission to log it as a find without a signature, I would be inclined to say no, except perhaps if they were from out of town and the log was temporarily unavailable because of special circumstances (such as frozen in place). Or maybe if they forgot to sign but dropped a travel bug in the cache as proof of their visit. Or if they had a free vacation cottage available in northern Wisconsin. 🙂

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I wouldn’t even consider a GPSr without the 3-axis compass. The Dakota 20 we have has it; the Dakota 10 does not. That’s why I don’t recommend the 10. It is a pain to have to move 4MPH in the woods at all times for the compass to work. With the 3-axis compass, it points in the correct direction even when pivoting or standing still. But since you’re looking at mainly the Oregon and Montana series, it’s a non issue since they both have it.

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My GPSr experience is limited to The Garmin Oregon 450/550, Garmin Dakota 20, Garmin GPSMAP62s, and the iPhone 4. Compared to the Oregon 550, the new Montana is very impressive. There are several positives and one (potentially) negative issue regarding the Montana. First the positives. It is now Garmin’s new top of the line touchscreen GPSr. It basically has everything that the Oregon has but with several improvements/enhancements. It has a 4″ high resolution glove-friendly touchscreen (Oregon is 3″), a 5MP autofocus geotagging camera (Oregon is 3.2MP). Like the Oregon it can make use of satellite imagery maps, topo maps, marine maps, and street maps, all of which can be purchased separately and loaded on a micro SD card. New with the Montana: it has dual orientation – it will switch automatically from landscape view to portrait view depending on how you hold the unit. It has a unique battery system – you can use either the rechargeable lithium ion battery (which they say lasts 20 hours), or switch to AA batteries. It supports both. Very cool. The pictures it takes are auto geotagged, so you could take a picture of something, and then navigate back to that same spot later. One of the big deals with this model is on the road navigation. Although it is a handheld GPSr, it offers turn-by-turn SPOKEN directions when used in the automotive mode. That alone may cause some to upgrade. In the automotive mode you would presumably snap it into the optional automotive mount, which will automatically switch the unit into the automotive mode in a landscape position.

The only drawback I see to it is its size. And for some they would consider it an advantage instead of a disadvantage. It’s an inch bigger than the Oregon or Colorado, which themselves are .6″ bigger than the Dakota. A question (at least for me) is when is the size too big. I saw a funny video on youtube where someone had the iPad hanging from a lanyard on their neck to do all of the things that a smartphone would do. I actually prefer the smaller size of a Dakota for a handheld, but that’s just me. It fits comfortably in my hand, and I don’t need glasses to see smaller images.

An issue for some may be the price of the Montana. Since it is new it will likely not be discounted much until after the first wave of purchasers. The Oregon is sometimes available at deep discounts from REI, Amazon, etc.

The Dakota, Oregon, and Montana models are all touchscreen models. It should be noted that the Garmin GPSMAP62st is an excellent model with buttons instead of a touchscreen. It is Garmin’s other top-notch handheld GPSr. I recently switched to the GPSMAP, love it, and my better half likes the Dakota the best. I like both of them, as well as the Oregon. If our Dakota ever died, I myself would probably get another Dakota 20 or an Oregon 550t.

Here’s my advice: check out the Montana, Oregon, and/or Dakota in a store and see which one you like the feel of. The shape, the weight, etc. Also evaluate which features are important to you. If you’re considering a non-touchscreen then check out the GPSMAP62st also.

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Wow, that was a great video; very applicable to geocaching. Thanks for sharing it here. I think it would be great to have that video or some type of related workshop presented at a future WGA event or meeting.

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@Trekkin and Birdin wrote:

Almost all of our released trackables have gone missing.

Wow, we have released 25 trackables so far and none have gone missing. At least net yet. There’s a few that haven’t had any activity since January, but nobody has visited those caches since then. We tend to put them in caches that are for premium memberships, event caches, series finals, or hard-to-find caches. However, we have passed along many trackables that we’ve put in TB hotels. I don’t know if they survived or not in most cases. My feeling is I hope trackables keep moving, and although it’s disappointing if they go missing, it’s a risk we’re willing to take and we’ll just hope for the best. We’ll just keep putting them out there (yeah, I know, famous last words…).

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Kim & I can help, although we have no idea of what we’re getting ourselves into. But we do have GPSr’s to show us the way.:wink:

C’mon people, anyone want to partner with us?? 😛 Sounds like fun!

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Here’s some “spin” that might help:

Check out the GATHERING WATERS FESTIVAL on Milwaukee’s lakefront at Lakeshore State Park
– Saturday June 11– 11AM to 6PM
– A National GET OUTDOORS DAY Event!
– A FREE event including:
•Canoe and Kayak Demos with Laacke & Joys
•Rock Wall Climbing
•Fishing
•Bike Village – Bike Tour from Miller Park
•Boat Rides & Tours
•Water Sports Demos
•Visits from Professional Athletes
•Landscaping Demos
•Water & Wellness Exhibits
•Park Passport with Big Door Prizes
•The best in local music, with food & beverages available
•Geocaching booth/tent (The WGA is an event partner!)

We need volunteers to work with Ken Braband in helping with the geocaching booth, including setting up/take down of the booth. Now’s your chance! Ken is the cache owner of the oldest geocache in the state (GC3B1 Powder Pike Hike) from way back in 2001, is a founder of the Wisconsin Geocaching Association, and was the first president of the WGA. Opportunities like this only come by once a year (during the annual Gathering Waters Festival). 8)

http://www.friendslsp.org/gathering-waters-festival/

Have YOU found the four caches located in this lakefront park?

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A ritual of ours is that we almost always take a picture of every cache and waypoint before opening the cache. We’ll normally take both a spoiler and a non-spoiler picture. The non-spoiler picture(s) we can post when we log the find online; the spoiler picture is for current and future reference only. Sometimes if time allows we’ll take a picture of the contents of the cache if it will make a good story. When we first started caching, before we had a decent GPSr with the capability of saving our finds via field notes, we had two main choices for recording our field notes: write them down in a notebook, or take a picture so we could refer to them later when logging online. Now we save the finds as field notes on the Garmin but still have to do one of the other two methods if using the iPhone. No matter which of the two GPSr’s we use we still try to keep up the habit of taking a picture. It sometimes reminds us of details to mention when posting finds, and comes in handy sometimes when we get a PAF call.

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Way to go Rebecca! I expect a full review (once you’ve become familiar with it)!

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@Mister Greenthumb wrote:

No matter what brand you use remember to mark the date you started using them on each battery.

Great idea Mr. G. I have a pile of them but haven’t ever marked a date on them. Starting that practice now!

[hack1of2]

Some quick thoughts on geocaching-friendly Garmin GPSr’s. All include a basic base map, which is the only map that many people would need:

Garmin Dakota 20 (avoid the Dakota 10)- Essentially an identical but smaller version of the Oregon 450. Very accurate. I like it better because it fits in my hand. My favorite. $399 retail, on sale at Amazon for $289

Oregon 450 – An excellent unit, probably their best seller, $399 retail, currently on sale at Amazon for $325

Oregon 450t – Same as the 450 but with a topographical map loaded, $499 retail, sale $427

Oregon 550 – Same as the 450 but with a camera, $499 retail, on sale at Amazon for $389

Oregon 550t – Top of the line of the touchscreen units. Same as the 550 but with a topographical map preloaded, $599 retail, on sale at Amazon for $471

GPSMAP 62S – Has buttons instead of a touchscreen (all of the above have a touchscreen), has a bigger antenna and therefore slightly better reception than all of the above, $489 retail, $349 on sale at Amazon

GPSMAP 62ST – Top of the line. Same as the 62S but with a topographical map preloaded, $549 on sale at Amazon for $489

My two favorites are the Dakota 20 and the GPSMAP 62st. However, if I already didn’t have a camera, I would hands down get the Oregon 550 or 550t. It comes in handy taking pictures of great cache locations, waypoint coordinates/log details, or fun-looking caches.

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Consumer Reports magazine just rated AA batteries in December 2010. They noted that Lithium batteries lasted the longest, but were the most expensive, and are not rechargeable. Lithium batteries lasted approx. 4 to 5 times longer than alkaline batteries. The NiMH rechargeables were the next best, lasting about three times longer than alkalines. Non-rechargeable alkalines were the poorest performers in the tests, but they would still be way better than the so-called “heavy duty” carbon zinc batteries, which weren’t even rated because they are the absolute worst and are old technology.

Among the rechargeables, all 5 brands that they tested performed well, and all received the same “very good” rating. They did state “battery manufacturers make lots of claims, but take them with a grain of salt.”

I have several brands of rechargeables; they all perform about the same if they have the same mAh rating. So here’s my advice::arrow: if you’re looking at buying rechargeable batteries, look for the ones with the highest mAh rating. The low-end ones are typically 1600 to 1800 mAh, which holds less ‘juice” than the ones with 2000 to 2500 mAh. I’m somewhat partial to Duracell, but really any of them will do.

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