Geocaching

One of my favorite things to do these days is to go geocaching, with my family or by myself. If you don't know what I'm talking about, check it out at the geocaching.com site. One of the things I like about it is the opportunity to combine technology with getting out and exploring the great outdoors.

For myself, I think I've got a superb solution for going completely paperless (i.e. avoiding printing and carrying around cache information) in my geocaching pursuits.
My equipment:

• T-Mobile MDA - Made by HTC, it is a Pocket PC running Windows Mobile. Allows me to receive and send email and use 3rd party applications such as cache tracking and GPS software.
• Garmin GPS10 - Garmin's GPS receiver for PDAs and smartphones. It works with both Palm and Pocket PC devices. I have the older model that has since been replaced by the Garmin Mobile 10.
• Cachemate - software for tracking and recording finds. Also provides support for travel bugs and waypoint navigation using a GPS.
• Spoiler Sync - (optional) queries your gpx file to retrieve the spoiler images from geocaching.com so you can sync them onto your device for viewing later.
  
• Subscription to geocaching.com

With the MDA I can receive and unzip the results of a pocket query. On the device I can then import the cache data into Cachemate.

The GPS10 links to the MDA using a bluetooth connection. This allows you to use your MDA as a fully functional GPS device with turn by turn directions. Handy while driving to the cache location but the directions adhere to roads. When nearby the cache, I switch over to Cachemate to use its direction and distance readings to take me directly to the waypoint. Once found, I record the log, find time and any travel bugs found into Cachemate.

I can then log the find on the geocaching site or if I can't wait, I access the geocaching.com WAP site on my MDA and log it there.

Happy caching!