Last night I was preparing to load up a lot of GPS markers into the Garmen eTrex and Magellen Maestro 4040. The problem I had was that the Geocaching site only allowed me to download a LOC file of about 20 locations. With a 25 mile radius, this left me with almost 90 files to combine into one. On top of that, the Maestro doesn’t understand LOC files, and the eTrex didn’t come with software to import/export waypoints.
The software for the Maestro was able to understand GPX files. I created a utility to search for all LOC files within a folder, combine them, and save them to a GPX file. It took me a few tries before I got the format setup correct. Once it was all setup, I was sailing fine and saw all the points show up in my local area on the Maestro.
LOC 2 GPX Converter C# Source Code
I then found some software called Expert GPS that claimed to work with the Garmin eTrex (but not with the Magellan Maestro). Much to my surprise, I was able to import the same GPX file and transfer the coordinates to the eTrex using the 30 day trial software. I had a limit of only 500 waypoints, so I had to cut the list pretty short. Switching between types of data to display continued to make the Expert GPS crash.
With both GPS devices in hand, my nephew and I headed out to find some treasure. We drove around into dead ends and discovered a bit of my neighborhood. When we got out to walk around, a police officer pulled up behind us with lights flashing. I was a bit confused until he started pointing to six guys driving around on ATV’s up by the power lines. I assume he thought we may have been with them at first. He got back in his car and we walked off.
We headed over to GCQVYX with the only information of “Lego Land Pearl Jam”. It didn’t make much sense. It took us over to the side of a local Wall-Mart. We saw a guard rail, some trees, and the pole to a road sign that must have been taken down recently. We spent about 20 minutes, but couldn’t find the whereabouts of the cache. We decided to head back and grabbed a bite to eat at Burger King.
Looking at the details after we got home, it appeared that the guard rail was the main thing we should have concentrated on, and to look for a micro cache. In turn, it would have led us to a second cache. I may return tomorrow to take a second look. There are a few problems with what we have available. First, the eTrex is often only good to about 20 feet at best (it’s old). Next, waypoints that I saw in the Magellan didn’t show up in the eTrex (500 limit). Maps of roads in the Magellan is severely out dated, or were just never entered. Even main streets are not present. And last – the lack of details. I may start looking into creating a lot of text files (one for each cache) and saving them to my phone. This way, we can look up the details in a text file when we arrive at each cache to get some clues and background information.
The optimal solution would be to just get a new GPS that can hold more waypoints, be a bit more accurate (within 3 feet), contain current maps, and allow me to import topographical, arial, and/or street maps of the area. Something like this would be around 300 to 600 dollars (ouch). Since I’m broke, I’ll make due with the toys I already have.
