Geocaching. Oh why did we stop playing this wonderful game. I bet we missed caches in Bali. In case you are a "muggle" to that of the geocache, it's quite simple really. No flicking of the wrist, no reciting of words for magic spells. That is unless your cursing to the GPS gods for low signal and flicking your GPS into the river close by. Otherwise it has all become so dang user friendly that anyone can do eeet. I, however, being the total tech geek that I am, had to go upgrade to a really nice
GPS with a lot of bells and whistles. *FACEPALM* Anyone see where this is going? First off the thing comes out of the box using a different coordinates system than what I am used to. Not only that but it has an internal electronic compass that needed to be calibrated. I assumed that this was like my old GPS. Out of the box, turn it on and go. It finds the satellites and bingo, you have a position. Noooooooo. Not this thing. I turned it on, entered the coordinates for our first cache of the day and it told me that I was, in fact, NOT standing 20 feet from where the cache should be, but that I was about 20 miles off. This is where the day started. It ends one baby step at a time later where I entered a way point and praise the GPS gods that be, I was standing on the correct point. That was 5 hours later... Now at the same time Erin was using her GPS to help us find the caches because hers was at least reading correctly out of the box. Not to be completely outdone by my GPS hers was bouncing all over the place, but at least it had the cache in the correct spot. It just couldn't figure out exactly where the hell WE were... After I had adjusted all my crap I knew what was up with hers. We actually said it at the same time. "Compass Calibration". Yup. Quick fix and hers was dead on as well. We didn't find two caches that I think we can go back and get easily now, but hey, we learned quite a bit about our new toys as a result of the days work.
Glad we didn't learn this 6 miles into a 5 day backpacking trip! That's the real reason we purchased such nice units. Mine takes actual topographical maps from National Geographic. Pretty cool. I can plot out hiking routes on it and it gives me milleage, elevation gain and loss over the entire trip and way points. Vurry nice. It also has roads, but it's not for driving really.
Geocaching. Oh why did we stop playing this wonderful game. I bet we missed caches in Bali. In case you are a "muggle" to that of the geocache, it's quite simple really. No flicking of the wrist, no reciting of words for magic spells. That is unless your cursing to the GPS gods for low signal and flicking your GPS into the river close by. Otherwise it has all become so dang user friendly that anyone can do eeet. I, however, being the total tech geek that I am, had to go upgrade to a really nice GPS with a lot of bells and whistles. *FACEPALM* Anyone see where this is going? First off the thing comes out of the box using a different coordinates system than what I am used to. Not only that but it has an internal electronic compass that needed to be calibrated. I assumed that this was like my old GPS. Out of the box, turn it on and go. It finds the satellites and bingo, you have a position. Noooooooo. Not this thing. I turned it on, entered the coordinates for our first cache of the day and it told me that I was, in fact, NOT standing 20 feet from where the cache should be, but that I was about 20 miles off. This is where the day started. It ends one baby step at a time later where I entered a way point and praise the GPS gods that be, I was standing on the correct point. That was 5 hours later... Now at the same time Erin was using her GPS to help us find the caches because hers was at least reading correctly out of the box. Not to be completely outdone by my GPS hers was bouncing all over the place, but at least it had the cache in the correct spot. It just couldn't figure out exactly where the hell WE were... After I had adjusted all my crap I knew what was up with hers. We actually said it at the same time. "Compass Calibration". Yup. Quick fix and hers was dead on as well. We didn't find two caches that I think we can go back and get easily now, but hey, we learned quite a bit about our new toys as a result of the days work. 
Glad we didn't learn this 6 miles into a 5 day backpacking trip! That's the real reason we purchased such nice units. Mine takes actual topographical maps from National Geographic. Pretty cool. I can plot out hiking routes on it and it gives me milleage, elevation gain and loss over the entire trip and way points. Vurry nice. It also has roads, but it's not for driving really.
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