Perrot State Park & Scratch the Cache

myside — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 17:36:41 -0500

My mother and I took off for the weekend and headed to Perrot State Park in Wisconsin. It is one of my favorite places to visit during the summer for camping. Their are plenty of spots to pitch a tent and miles of hiking trails to add.

We both needed to get away, so the weekend involved lots of sleep and good eating. We did walk a mile or two to tell the truth, but we did not take up Brady's bluff on this trip.

I hid a Geocache pretty close to our campsite by the name of "Scratch". The naming convention represents the big deep scratch across my face I got while trying to find a cozy home for this hide. Scratch can be found [here].

We both had a great time. I really enjoyed spending a weekend with my mother to just get away from it all. I hope to do it again soon!

.88 miles of track on my map

myside — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 22:40:25 -0500

I decided to do some night caching at our local precious Hixon forest. Right before I arrived at the GC location, about .88 miles from the entrance I used, I realized I did not lock my bike. That is awfully strange to just pop up in my head when I was about to pull a find on a nearby Geocache.

I tightened up my boots and basically ran back to the Hixon house where I found my bike untouched and looking good. Woofta!

20 GIS & Geocaching Must Have Software Applications

myside — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 19:45:21 -0500

[GPX Downloader] Firefox addon to save information such as coordinates, description, hints and logs into a GPX file that can be sent to your GPS unit.

[Minimap Sidebar] Firefox Addon: The Minimap Addon gives you a suite of built-in maps and mapping tools for your web browser. Drag and Drop addresses or address links you find on web pages to view their location in the Map Sidebar, or by manually adding locations. Preview addresses from within any webpage using the Map Panel and get larger scale maps with the Map Tab. Import/Export KML, GPX, minimap xml file, CSV (export only). View traffic Info, drag and drop KML files, local search, Google, Yahoo! and Live Local directions, view in Google Earth, Tagzania, Platial, Geourl and many more. Address/Location points are stored locally for later use. Geodiscovery reveals geoURLís or geotags as you browse, with microformat support available in Firefox 3 (Adr and Geo).

[CacheMate] CacheMate™ is a database for tracking GPS cache hunts. You can store information about caches or benchmarks, decode hints, and transfer data to and from other software and devices. - Palm OS, Pocket PC, Windows Smartphone, Google Android

[Cache Stats] If you like to keep tabs on your geocaching statistics, you'll love CacheStats. How has your find rate been holding up over the years? What are your longest streaks? Want to see what it will take to reach your end-of-year goal? CacheStats analyzes your "My Finds" pocket query to find out all this and more.

[BASICgps] Free Geocaching application for Windows Mobile.

[CacheBerry] CacheBerry (GPX) – Geocaching Specific - BlackBerry Shareware: View, search & manage Pocket Queries/GPX files.

[Plucker] Plucker is an offline Web and free eBook reader for Palm OS® based handheld devices, Windows Mobile (PocketPC) devices and other handheld PDAs. Plucker contains POSIX tools, scripts and "conduits" which work on UNIX, Linux, Microsoft Windows and Apple OS X. These let you decide exactly what part of the World Wide Web you'd like to convert for reading on your PDA. These web pages are then processed, compressed, and transferred to the PDA for viewing by the Plucker viewer.

[iSilo] iSilo™ is a highly versatile document / ebook reader available on more platforms than any other reader. The supported platforms include iPhone/iPod touch, Android™, BlackBerry® Touch, BlackBerry®, Palm OS®, Pocket PC, Windows Mobile Smartphone, Symbian S60 3rd Edition, Symbian Series 60, Symbian UIQ 3, Symbian UIQ, Symbian Series 80, and Windows® CE Handheld PC handhelds, as well as for Windows® and Mac OS X computers. You can find thousands of ready-made documents downloadable immediately for reading with iSilo™ or you can create your own documents from HTML content using iSiloX.

[Cetus GPS] (LOC) - Free PalmOS application that interfaces with your GPS through a serial port (or connected GPS). It can read waypoint files in LOC format.

[GPXView] (GPX) - Donateware application for managing GPX files on PocketPC 2002 or later.

[Geocache Navigator] Geocache GPS software by Trimble

[Viking] (GPX) - A free/open source program to manage GPS data. You can import and plot tracks and waypoints, show Terraserver maps under it, add coordinate lines, make new tracks, waypoints, and more.

[GPS Manager] (GPX) - A graphical manager of GPS data that makes possible the preparation, inspection and manipulation of GPS data in a friendly environment. GPSMan supports communication and real-time logging with Garmin, Lowrance and Magellan receivers and accepts real-time logging information in NMEA 0183 from any GPS receiver. GPSMan can also be used in command mode (with no graphical interface)

[MapSend Lite] (GPX/LOC) is a free application from Magellan that now has built-in geocaching functionality.

[GSAK] (GPX/LOC) - All in one application that allows you to manage GPX/LOC files, upload to your GPS, and convert to various other formats. Uses GPSBabel as the back end.

[GPSBabel] (GPX/LOC/KML) - A free console-based application for converting LOC and GPX to various other formats. Source code available.

[GPX Spinner] (GPX) - Geocaching Specific - Shareware application that can convert GPX files to iSilo and Plucker format.

[Google Earth] (GPX/KML) - Google Earth can overlay the travels of trackable items on geocaching.com. Google Earth also uses GPS Babel to allow Premium Members the ability to drag a Pocket Query GPX file on to the application to overlay geocaches.

[EasyGPS] (GPX/LOC) - A free application for managing both LOC and GPX file types

[ClayJar Watcher] (GPX) - Geocaching Specific - Freeware application that helps you manage your Pocket Query GPX files

Myside's Spew

Perrot State Park & Scratch the Cache

.88 miles of track on my map

20 GIS & Geocaching Must Have Software Applications