Remember the days before PAPERLESS caching?

March 25, 2015

Gone are the days of printing out endless papers of clues for our finds. Its a bit nostalgic..lol I kept a binder and jotted down notes on my finds and separated them based on area. A hard copy of GSAK, if you will.. lol

March 25, 2015

I did keep a few pages but when I started I had gsak on a palm pilot..

March 25, 2015

I did keep a few pages but when I started I had gsak on a palm pilot..

I got a palm piolt for geocaching too. I don't remember if it was gsak or something else. I might just have to fire up the old palm..lol

March 25, 2015

I agree. But I am sure it was gsak on mine.

19k · March 25, 2015

I only printed out the cache pages for a short period (remember when you could select which sections of the cache page you wanted to print out?). Didn't take long for me to come up with a shorthand method of writing the information I needed on a scrap of paper. Essentially, the GC# (actual cache name didn't mean much on those old eTex GPSrs), D/T ratings, and size, and hint, if any.

Once you found the cache, you would sit down, read the log, or at least skim through it and look for any longer writings, then write something about your experience in the PAPER log.

Most group caching that I knew of used the method where, once you spotted the cache, you would quietly step away before announcing (maybe) that you had spotted it, leaving the rest to find it by themselves.

I once got hollered at by a woman that I used to cache with, when I wanted to go after the 13th cache of the day, that "Its not all about the numbers!!!"

March 25, 2015

And there were no in the field geo checkers... Or seen seeing a log

13.7k · March 25, 2015

I still keep notes/hints in a mini compostion book.

Habit I guess. Most my life, needed to take notes.

8.6k · March 25, 2015

We started out with printing the cache pages, too. Then got a little bit smarter X-ing out the printed side... using the clean side to print up the next outings' expedition. Some cache pages needed resizing in order to get what you needed on the single page.

Used a clip-board to carry the pages, all pre-set in anticipated "Find" order. Of course, had a pencil attached to the clip-board.

It was really true that onlookers would think you were doing something "official" carrying a clipboard with an electronic device in your other hand.

Edited March 25, 2015 by Gitchee-Gummee

4.1k · March 25, 2015

I printed out something once and then got a palm pilot with cachemate. The phone eventually took over that function. Even the paperless gpsr I have (Oregon 600) is not that paperless for many earthcaches or graphic cache descriptions.

2.8k · March 25, 2015

I remember geocaching before selective availability was turned off. However we were not looking for a container, rather a hanglider pilot that crashed into the trees on the side of a mountain.

The GPS did get us withing earshot and the FTF prize was dinner and beer at the expense of the pilot.

Edited March 25, 2015 by Roman!

6.8k · March 25, 2015

Gone are the days of printing out endless papers of clues for our finds. Its a bit nostalgic..lol I kept a binder and jotted down notes on my finds and separated them based on area. A hard copy of GSAK, if you will.. lol

I still cache in very much the same way as in 2002. I print the descriptions of caches with a more complex description like most multi caches, Earthcaches and make a few notes or just remember what I need for the rest. I have never kept the printouts after I used them.

1.9k · March 25, 2015

I still use a Pocket PC. Cheap and effective, although they can be slow and sometimes glitchy. And yes, I did use paper before I became a premium member.

Edited March 25, 2015 by Dgwphotos

7.4k · March 25, 2015

I have always used a device for cache pages, and a notebook to jot stuff down.

9.1k · March 25, 2015

Great thread! I love waxing nostalgic.

Recently while cleaning in my garage, I stumbled across a stack of cache page printouts from the 2002-2003 timeframe. You could tell which caches I didn't search for - they had clean printouts. The ones I hunted for, their printouts were filled with handwritten clue decryptions, notes on virtuals, calculations on multicaches, notes on what was traded, etc. Several were stained with either mud or blood.

I also found a printout from "Watcher" (predecessor to GSAK) from May 2003, listing all the caches within a 50 mile radius of downtown Pittsburgh, PA. It ran for three pages. Today there are 8,176 caches in the same radius.

I cached with a Garmin GPS V and paper printouts until I bought a Palm Pilot. Then the GPS V died, and I switched to a Magellan Explorist, which I disliked. Then the Palm Pilot died, so I bought my first semi-paperless GPS, a Garmin 60CSX. Later, a smartphone supplemented information not captured on the GPS. When the 60CSX died, I switched to a Garmin 62 which is fully paperless. I now use a combination of the GPS only, the iPhone only, or both. I do not recall the last time I printed a cache page.

3.6k · March 25, 2015

I had a Lowrance GPS and no auto-routing so I had to print out paper and write directions from one cache to the next.

Edited March 25, 2015 by jellis

March 25, 2015

My, my technology sure has come a long way. What will come next? Luckily in a sport such as this... there is only so far technology can take you. I guess thats one of the many reasons I enjoy it so much. On pretty days.. it takes the place of the gym and gives me a reason to get outside. I love introducing it to my friends and telling them of the "days gone by."

15.3k · March 25, 2015

I've been geocaching paperless since I created my account and started recording geocache info on my Palm PDA. The main exceptions have been trips that introduced newbies to geocaching. It's just a lot easier to hand a newbie hardcopy cache descriptions than to teach them to read cache descriptions on another new device/app.

March 25, 2015

I used to print out sheets and also jot down notes on pieces of paper. Then for a while I used GSAK downloading to my GPSr (when it was alive) using my office computer because I had a Mac at home and there was no GSAK for Mac. Paperless caching is great--it saves TREES!! Now...if only cachers would just stop climbing them. :-/

March 25, 2015

Oh my yes. I actually found my binder with all my printed out caches a couple of months ago. I remember walking through more forests then I can count trying to read the paper, hold the GPS (a Garmin eTrex that I had to program every coordinate digit by digit thank you very much) and look around for all the possible spots without falling on my face. I want to tell you I'm nostalgic and miss those days. But I can't because I don't. I'm inherently lazy and like my paperless caching!

1.5k · March 25, 2015

We printed everything out for the first few months and caches with a Magellan Explorist 500

Then I got a used Palm Pilot, put cachemate on it, and only printed out a Google Earth screen print of the caches for the day.

Now, it's GSAK, Our GPSMap 62s and Etrex 20, both paperless units, and I load the data onto my SmartPhone into something called GDAK, which produces a bigger map.

19k · March 25, 2015

And if anybody thinks that nothing ever improves on this website, you only need to remember the original maps. YUK!!! Thank you, Groundspeak.

9.1k · March 25, 2015

Seriously! Here is a flashback to what the Geocaching.com cache maps looked like in 2002:

It's no wonder why people went to great lengths to export waypoints into third party mapping solutions. None of that is really necessary anymore, except maybe for backcountry treks or power caching runs.

6.8k · March 25, 2015

And if anybody thinks that nothing ever improves on this website, you only need to remember the original maps. YUK!!! Thank you, Groundspeak.

The only maps on gc.com I occasionally use are google maps and osm for looking at the location of a single cache - it does not make much of a difference for me if I type in the coordinates myself or if I follow a link. Those maps are not the work of Groundspeak. I do not use the Groundspeak cache maps that show more than one cache.

Of course I'm aware of belonging to a minority which also is shown by this thread. I'm fully aware that many things that I regard as a step back for myself are a step forward for others. Those who changed their approach to geocaching are obviously much more in the need for changes than those who did not change anything in their approach. There is no universal truth in this context.

19k · March 25, 2015

Seriously! Here is a flashback to what the Geocaching.com cache maps looked like in 2002:

It's no wonder why people went to great lengths to export waypoints into third party mapping solutions. None of that is really necessary anymore, except maybe for backcountry treks or power caching runs.

And that doesn't show the awkward zooming and panning, nor how painfully slow those operations were!

19k · March 25, 2015

And if anybody thinks that nothing ever improves on this website, you only need to remember the original maps. YUK!!! Thank you, Groundspeak.

The only maps on gc.com I occasionally use are google maps and osm for looking at the location of a single cache - it does not make much of a difference for me if I type in the coordinates myself or if I follow a link. Those maps are not the work of Groundspeak. I do not use the Groundspeak cache maps that show more than one cache.

Of course I'm aware of belonging to a minority which also is shown by this thread. I'm fully aware that many things that I regard as a step back for myself are a step forward for others. Those who changed their approach to geocaching are obviously much more in the need for changes than those who did not change anything in their approach. There is no universal truth in this context.

Oh, those are Groundspeak's maps. Well, the maps themselves are Google, OSM, and so-on, but the interface to them is what I am referring to. You apparently don't remember having to hit an arrow with your mouse pointer, then go off and do something else while the map zoomed or panned one step, then having to repeat until you finally got where you wanted to be.

6.8k · March 25, 2015

Oh, those are Groundspeak's maps. Well, the maps themselves are Google, OSM, and so-on, but the interface to them is what I am referring to. You apparently don't remember having to hit an arrow with your mouse pointer, then go off and do something else while the map zoomed or panned one step, then having to repeat until you finally got where you wanted to be.

The point I tried to make is that these maps never played a role for me - not back then and not now. I'm however fully aware of how the cache map on gc.com looked liked. I do not deny that this map

improved - it's just completely irrelevant for me.

What I use occasionally is looking up a specific cache coordinate on a map. To that end it only depends which maps are available. Meanwhile good free maps are available, but still I mostly use topo maps for Austria which was also what I used most frequently back then. Google maps are quite bad except for city caching and the osm maps can compete with the Austrian topo maps only in very special cases (mostly if cachers added small trails to the osm maps) - of course their advantage is that they are free and that they are available for GPS usage (which I do not care about).

It does not make a big difference to me whether I paste cache coordinates into the input window of google maps myself or click on a link from the cache page. Of course this is true only when one wants to look at the location of a single cache, but that's the only way I use maps. For all other things I rely on the nearest search which provides a list of caches and that's also why I feel very much inhibited by the new search.

Edited March 25, 2015 by cezanne

19k · March 25, 2015

Oh, those are Groundspeak's maps. Well, the maps themselves are Google, OSM, and so-on, but the interface to them is what I am referring to. You apparently don't remember having to hit an arrow with your mouse pointer, then go off and do something else while the map zoomed or panned one step, then having to repeat until you finally got where you wanted to be.

The point I tried to make is that these maps never played a role for me - not back then and not now. I'm however fully aware of how the cache map on gc.com looked liked. I do not deny that this map

improved - it's just completely irrelevant for me.

To each his(or her) own.

March 25, 2015

That's right, programming the Magellan GPS by hand. No routing just one cache entered at a time then updated the PDA to show the find and a quick log. Once the PDA was uploaded to GSAK I cannot remember if it loaded up or if I needed to re-enter the data into GC.com. I must have 20 pocket queries left over from when I needed them to keep the PDA up to date.

7.4k · March 26, 2015

That's right, programming the Magellan GPS by hand. No routing just one cache entered at a time then updated the PDA to show the find and a quick log. Once the PDA was uploaded to GSAK I cannot remember if it loaded up or if I needed to re-enter the data into GC.com. I must have 20 pocket queries left over from when I needed them to keep the PDA up to date.

This was me. Loved my old eXplorist!

I had an iPaq with GPXSonar. It was great.

One of our favourite silly caching memories was a time that we were standing in the middle of a field looking for a notoriously difficult cache. I had pulled out the iPaq to reread some cache logs, and noticed that I was getting WiFi in the middle of the field! Must have been an oddly strong signal from the houses on the road, but we were quite far away. That area kind of became our go-to WiFi hotspot for a time.

So I guess I'm not nostalgic about paper, but I'm nostalgic about my pre-smartphone caching days!

March 26, 2015

That's right, programming the Magellan GPS by hand. No routing just one cache entered at a time then updated the PDA to show the find and a quick log. Once the PDA was uploaded to GSAK I cannot remember if it loaded up or if I needed to re-enter the data into GC.com. I must have 20 pocket queries left over from when I needed them to keep the PDA up to date.

This was me. Loved my old eXplorist!

I had an iPaq with GPXSonar. It was great.

One of our favourite silly caching memories was a time that we were standing in the middle of a field looking for a notoriously difficult cache. I had pulled out the iPaq to reread some cache logs, and noticed that I was getting WiFi in the middle of the field! Must have been an oddly strong signal from the houses on the road, but we were quite far away. That area kind of became our go-to WiFi hotspot for a time.

So I guess I'm not nostalgic about paper, but I'm nostalgic about my pre-smartphone caching days!

That is great. My pda did not have WiFi but we bought a compact flashcard WiFi adapter. Still have all that stuff in a box.

I went back and looked at a few photos of out first caches, good times. OP, thanks for the thread. Definitely brought back some good times in these interesting days of late.

Edited March 26, 2015 by doc73

March 26, 2015

I started with a Megellan 310 and had to enter coordinates one by one. I wrote the coordinates down on index cards along with the cache name so I could log them on when I returned home. I had terrible internet back then and there were a ton of caches I found and never logged because back then I was only interested in the search and not the numbers.

Edited March 26, 2015 by GELOS

March 26, 2015

I started with a Megellan 310 and had to enter coordinates one by one. I wrote the coordinates down on index cards along with the cache name so I could log them on when I returned home. I had terrible internet back then and there were a ton of caches I found and never logged because back then I was only interested in the search and not the numbers.

Imagine that.. And they were full of cool things. I do not ever even remember finding anything but ammo cans or the like.

March 26, 2015

I started with a Megellan 310 and had to enter coordinates one by one. I wrote the coordinates down on index cards along with the cache name so I could log them on when I returned home. I had terrible internet back then and there were a ton of caches I found and never logged because back then I was only interested in the search and not the numbers.

Imagine that.. And they were full of cool things. I do not ever even remember finding anything but ammo cans or the like.

They were indeed mostly large containers. It seemed odd when I returned to caching after a few years break and it seemed like all there is anymore is micros. I'm coming to appreciate them too now. I'll add that back in the day I would often leave stuff and usually sign the paper log in the cache, but I didn't take anything. I've always been a fan of the pay it forward concept and so to me I enjoyed finding a cache, leaving stuff and taking nothing.

March 26, 2015

Started with a binder and pages and pages of caches along with our Garmin Legend and keying all the coordinates manually, deciphering the clue in the field when needed, then we got a Palm Pilot and Easygps and Cachmate were our friend. That was the end of paper for us. :laughing:

Edited March 26, 2015 by Shinook & White Juan

March 26, 2015

I started with a Megellan 310 and had to enter coordinates one by one. I wrote the coordinates down on index cards along with the cache name so I could log them on when I returned home. I had terrible internet back then and there were a ton of caches I found and never logged because back then I was only interested in the search and not the numbers.

Imagine that.. And they were full of cool things. I do not ever even remember finding anything but ammo cans or the like.

They were indeed mostly large containers. It seemed odd when I returned to caching after a few years break and it seemed like all there is anymore is micros. I'm coming to appreciate them too now. I'll add that back in the day I would often leave stuff and usually sign the paper log in the cache, but I didn't take anything. I've always been a fan of the pay it forward concept and so to me I enjoyed finding a cache, leaving stuff and taking nothing.

My first cache (and many of my early finds were) was a micro in 2001...There were plenty of micros around then, it just depended on where you started. If you lived in the city, there was still the difficulty of hiding something large without it being compromised. There were more regular and large sizes in general, because there is a lot of open space outside the cities. There was also more of an emphasis on the swag/contents of caches, which required larger containers. My biggest complaint is the number of small and micro placements in the countryside (in the city many of them are justified).

I bought a GPS II back in 1997 and was using it at work (in the woods), brought it with me while I was up on the Iditarod trail in 1998...It was nice to have a hobby connected with the technology when Geocaching came along. I remember watching the sat signal screen on my gps the moment the signals were de-scrambled...pretty cool moment.

March 26, 2015

I started with a Megellan 310 and had to enter coordinates one by one. I wrote the coordinates down on index cards along with the cache name so I could log them on when I returned home. I had terrible internet back then and there were a ton of caches I found and never logged because back then I was only interested in the search and not the numbers.

Imagine that.. And they were full of cool things. I do not ever even remember finding anything but ammo cans or the like.

That is so true. It was more about the search and the adventure than it was about the numbers. Miss those days.

14k · March 26, 2015

I started out with a Garmin 76Cx and would print out cache listings. I had a plastic clipboard that was about 3/4" thick and would open up with a compartment inside for keeping pens, old listings etc.

That became cumbersome so I started using a small notebook with a list of caches I wanted to find and any notes I wanted to make. I used the notebook to keep track of my finds during the day, though I only did more than 20 a day on a few occasions (I did 31 in a day in 2009 and that's still my record).

I had an old Palm but it didn't work very well so I was using something called MobiPocket that would save web pages and other documents in a "mobi" format which I could download to an old Blackberry pearl. That was paperless caching back then.

March 26, 2015

I started with a Megellan 310 and had to enter coordinates one by one. I wrote the coordinates down on index cards along with the cache name so I could log them on when I returned home. I had terrible internet back then and there were a ton of caches I found and never logged because back then I was only interested in the search and not the numbers.

Imagine that.. And they were full of cool things. I do not ever even remember finding anything but ammo cans or the like.

They were indeed mostly large containers. It seemed odd when I returned to caching after a few years break and it seemed like all there is anymore is micros. I'm coming to appreciate them too now. I'll add that back in the day I would often leave stuff and usually sign the paper log in the cache, but I didn't take anything. I've always been a fan of the pay it forward concept and so to me I enjoyed finding a cache, leaving stuff and taking nothing.

My first cache (and many of my early finds were) was a micro in 2001...There were plenty of micros around then, it just depended on where you started. If you lived in the city, there was still the difficulty of hiding something large without it being compromised. There were more regular and large sizes in general, because there is a lot of open space outside the cities. There was also more of an emphasis on the swag/contents of caches, which required larger containers. My biggest complaint is the number of small and micro placements in the countryside (in the city many of them are justified).

I bought a GPS II back in 1997 and was using it at work (in the woods), brought it with me while I was up on the Iditarod trail in 1998...It was nice to have a hobby connected with the technology when Geocaching came along. I remember watching the sat signal screen on my gps the moment the signals were de-scrambled...pretty cool moment.

I will agree to that, I am not a micro fan when they are put somewhere a regular should have been. I grew up in the country so we had lots of open space so not a ton of micros around me.

March 26, 2015

Gone are the days of printing out endless papers of clues for our finds. Its a bit nostalgic..lol I kept a binder and jotted down notes on my finds and separated them based on area. A hard copy of GSAK, if you will.. lol

Ummm... I still write a bunch of junk down! Still using my Garmin eTrex Ventura (I think that's the name of it) and I'm not crazy about using my iPhone since it eats up the power etc etc. I'm old skool, yo.

March 26, 2015

...the days before PAPERLESS caching.

I've been paperless caching since the beginning :lol:

March 26, 2015

That is awesome! You get the win...

2.1k · March 26, 2015

My dad gave us a Garmin eMap in the spring of 2001 before we knew about geocaching. Late in the year we went after our first six caches and we didn't even know what a waypoint was. We just lined up the North coords and moved around until the West zeroed out. Downloading cache waypoints must have been available around that time because I don't recall entering many cache waypoints by hand. Paperless was not available yet.

December of 2002 We made a trip from Eureka to Seattle to Las Vegas and I printed out 163 caches at 3 or 4 pages each. That was a looottt of paper! We found 61 caches for the trip. Afterward I removed all the staples of the un-found cache pages and printed on the back sides for the next several outings.

By summer of 2004 paperless caching was underway. We still used our non-auto-routing eMap but added an HP PDA with Easy GPS for waypoints and the venerable Spinner to prepare the downloaded webpages for the PDA.

Here is the equipment that Wienerdog and Team Sagefox used during the two-day Portland (OR) Cache Machine:

Garmin III (or maybe it's a IV), Garmin V, Garmin 60c, Garmin 60cs, Garmin eMap, four HP PDAs, two-way radios, printed CM route, Diet Pepsi and other assorted fun stuff.

Sometime in 2004 We bought a 60cs and made the jump to auto-routing which was a major improvement. I no longer needed to have my head in the electronic map to see where to turn. I even learned how to fall down with a GPS and PDA both in one hand and not drop them.

But the best improvement we made was buying the Colorado and the 62s. A GPS with the web page info - man, we love it! We also use a Garmin Nuvi to auto-route to each cache.

I do use a smartphone now but only to augment. I still love the GPS technology. Last weekend we cached all day with some people who primarily use smartphones and they are very good at it. With a PQ in the phone they had everything they needed.

I always appreciated whatever improvements came along for mapping and downloading no matter how awkward they may seem to us today. GSAK has been a lot of fun since I attended a GSAK workshop sponsored by the Washington State Geocachers Association. There I learned a few tricks to make some sense of that powerful database program and now feel very comfortable with the little bit I can do with it.

Those early days were "the good old days" and today's caching is tomorrow's good old days. We are having a ball with this game.

Edit: equipment list.

Edited March 26, 2015 by Team Sagefox

March 26, 2015

I have to be honest. Technology has made things a lot easier... there's nothing like logging your finds as you go via an app on your phone as opposed to logging a bunch in the evening or night after a long, hot day of trekking through the woods. Having said that though... its not as personal anymore. I for one find myself logging a quick TFTC. Or something along those lines.. and then it's quick .. onto the next. Its harder to be more "wordy" while on your phone than it is sitting down at your laptop. I miss reading the logs.. and posting them? Well I go back to logging them with my laptop? Hell no. Time is money. But still.. the nostalgia

9.1k · March 26, 2015

I've been able to preserve my "old school" online logging habits. I am not a "numbers hound" but I am very proud of one statistic: my average log length is 109 words, qualifying me for the "Diamond" level in BadgeGen. That is a hard number to maintain across nearly 6000 finds over nearly 13 years of geocaching -- especially when navigating an ocean that's increasingly filled with unremarkable cache placements. Still, I find something nice to say about every cache I find.

How do I accomplish this? FIELD NOTES. I never submit a "found it" log directly from my iPhone App. Rather, I save everything as a field note (either on the phone or the GPS), so that I can write a long and proper log later back at home. The field note consists of just a few "prompting" words to remind me of which cache it was, like this example: "big hill, lid cracked, took hello kitty TB" That note will prompt three sentences about slipping and sliding on the hill, a sentence about the maintenance issue and a sentence about taking the trackable.

When I get home, the field notes are all arranged for me in order, so it is still a big timesaver versus the old school methods for keeping track of the order in which each cache was found.

March 26, 2015

I've been able to preserve my "old school" online logging habits. I am not a "numbers hound" but I am very proud of one statistic: my average log length is 109 words, qualifying me for the "Diamond" level in BadgeGen. That is a hard number to maintain across nearly 6000 finds over nearly 13 years of geocaching -- especially when navigating an ocean that's increasingly filled with unremarkable cache placements. Still, I find something nice to say about every cache I find.

How do I accomplish this? FIELD NOTES. I never submit a "found it" log directly from my iPhone App. Rather, I save everything as a field note (either on the phone or the GPS), so that I can write a long and proper log later back at home. The field note consists of just a few "prompting" words to remind me of which cache it was, like this example: "big hill, lid cracked, took hello kitty TB" That note will prompt three sentences about slipping and sliding on the hill, a sentence about the maintenance issue and a sentence about taking the trackable.

When I get home, the field notes are all arranged for me in order, so it is still a big timesaver versus the old school methods for keeping track of the order in which each cache was found.

Thanks so much for the tip. I will def. do this. It had never occured to me. When I log in from my laptop... where do i find these field notes that i have saved?

9.1k · March 26, 2015

After you send your Field Notes to the website (either from the field note option in your mobile app or by synching with your GPS) you will find them on the Field Notes page. You can access the Field Notes page as the last menu choice on the "Play" menu dropdown seen at the top of each page on the website.

You can learn more about Field Notes in the Help Center. There are several articles, depending on whether you are uploading from a GPS or a mobile device. Just put "field notes" in the Help Center's search box.

2.1k · March 26, 2015

...but I am very proud of one statistic: my average log length is 109 words, qualifying me for the "Diamond" level in BadgeGen. That is a hard number to maintain across nearly 6000 finds over nearly 13 years of geocaching.

That's great. My average was 75 words and stayed like that for about a decade. I don't know if it still is. I might play with BG to see what it is now.

FIELD NOTES. ...Rather, I save everything as a field note (either on the phone or the GPS)

I am still writing in a paper notebook. The 62s is awkward and the Colorado is even more awkward and I have been hesitant to grub up the phone or get it wet but maybe this will inspire me.

...so that I can write a long and proper log later back at home.

Yep. That is 1/3rd of the fun in this game - the cache communication. We just had a 114 cache weekend (with 700 miles driving) and I perused almost every cache at home when I logged.

I know this is not for everybody and I don't care if people don't write anything. It is just a fun part of the way I do the game.

3.1k · March 27, 2015

My dad gave us a Garmin eMap in the spring of 2001 before we knew about geocaching. Late in the year we went after our first six caches and we didn't even know what a waypoint was. We just lined up the North coords and moved around until the West zeroed out. Downloading cache waypoints must have been available around that time because I don't recall entering many cache waypoints by hand. Paperless was not available yet.

December of 2002 We made a trip from Eureka to Seattle to Las Vegas and I printed out 163 caches at 3 or 4 pages each. That was a looottt of paper! We found 61 caches for the trip. Afterward I removed all the staples of the un-found cache pages and printed on the back sides for the next several outings.

By summer of 2004 paperless caching was underway. We still used our non-auto-routing eMap but added an HP PDA with Easy GPS for waypoints and the venerable Spinner to prepare the downloaded webpages for the PDA.

Here is the equipment that Wienerdog and Team Sagefox used during the two-day Portland (OR) Cache Machine:

Garmin III (or maybe it's a IV), Garmin V, Garmin 60c, Garmin 60cs, Garmin eMap, four HP PDAs, two-way radios, printed CM route, Diet Pepsi and other assorted fun stuff.

Sometime in 2004 We bought a 60cs and made the jump to auto-routing which was a major improvement. I no longer needed to have my head in the electronic map to see where to turn. I even learned how to fall down with a GPS and PDA both in one hand and not drop them.

But the best improvement we made was buying the Colorado and the 62s. A GPS with the web page info - man, we love it! We also use a Garmin Nuvi to auto-route to each cache.

I do use a smartphone now but only to augment. I still love the GPS technology. Last weekend we cached all day with some people who primarily use smartphones and they are very good at it. With a PQ in the phone they had everything they needed.

I always appreciated whatever improvements came along for mapping and downloading no matter how awkward they may seem to us today. GSAK has been a lot of fun since I attended a GSAK workshop sponsored by the Washington State Geocachers Association. There I learned a few tricks to make some sense of that powerful database program and now feel very comfortable with the little bit I can do with it.

Those early days were "the good old days" and today's caching is tomorrow's good old days. We are having a ball with this game.

Edit: equipment list.

Sigh... :tired:

I looked at this photo, and really had a deep ping of nostalgia. I really liked the novelty of seeking caches when you had to do so much work just to find a couple of them a day--let alone a "cache machine" of 60 caches (!) in a day.

Now it just doesn't have the same feel when I don't have to spend a day looking at maps and deciding a route, print cache pages, HAND ENTER all the coordinates (didn't have a serial plug for my computer, but my eTrex sure needed one!)...those were the days.

I also recall when I got an iPod Touch for Christmas in 2007, the iPhone/App market was just beginning. Someone had made a way to download some of the GPX info to a 'Note' (Anyone else use iGeoCacher?) for iOS, and I wondered aloud on the forums if Groundspeak themselves might entertain the idea of an App of their own which would allow more clear and accurate GPX info to appear in a nice interface on iPhone or iPod. That question came in with a resounding "CLANG!" of disapproval. Well, that'll show me. Now apps for paperless caching are all over--and Apps that allow for searching for caches with smartphones are "the way of Groundspeak" today. Paperless was forever changed when Groundspeak finally took that suggestion and went with it for these newfangled touch-screen data-hungry cellular devices!

Now, get off my lawn! :laughing:

Edited March 27, 2015 by NeverSummer

7.3k · March 27, 2015

I'm still in the olden days.

We don't have any type of mobile phone.

I usually use the maps on GS to search around for caches to hunt. I make up a Notepad file with the GC code, cache name, coordinates, D/T rating, size, and decrypted hint. I will include any useful info gleaned from previous logs.

I've got a bunch of folders on the computer named "geocaching xxx", usually with the name of the area.

I use GPSBabel to load caches onto our 60csx one at a time.

Some times, if I'm not sure, I'll print out a map, and make notes on it.

We don't usually search out a lot of caches at once, so I can usually print the Notepad file on one side of the page, and the map on the other.

I'm embarassed to say that I've recently "discovered" binders full of one-cache-per-page printouts. Ugh. What a waste of paper and ink. I'll bet that 90% of those printouts are of long-archived caches.

We did take our e-reader once. Had the Notepad file and maps saved on it. Saved some ink doing that. Perhaps we should get back to doing things that way. The problem with that is that I can't make notes with the e-reader.

And I need to make notes. Even with only a few caches searched during one outing, my memory is not good enough to log things properly later that day. Didn't used to be that way.

I'm still best-pleased with my system for the time that I somehow managed to miss loading 2 caches into the gps. No problem, I've got the coordinates printed out. Was a good lesson in remembering how to manually input coordinates. And a good lesson in remembering to check and double-check that I've not missed loading them into the gps with the computer. (Manually entering coords = pita)

I doubt that we would ever "cache on the fly", should we ever get a mobile phone of some sort. I don't like doing that. I try to research each cache carefully before we head out.

Oh, yeah....

get off my lawn, too!!!

B.

Edited March 27, 2015 by Pup Patrol

March 27, 2015

I did not think anyone could function in this world without a way to text or check their facespace account on while driving 75 on the freeway!!

Remember the days before PAPERLESS caching?

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