CachingCentral

Stumbled upon a video on YouTube about a geocacher documenting the final 2 US states he’s geocached in. The video lasts for just under 10 minutes and is very well done.

The final 2 states are Nevada and New Mexico with a side visit to Geo Woodstock thrown in. I didn’t catch his name in the video but he mentions the 50th cache in New Mexico he was going to find so I looked it on Geocaching.com and found the cacher to be DavidMac. His log entry for the cache found in the 50th state is White’s City Madness (a.k.a. The Phantom Bathroom).

You can view the video at 50 States Geocached.

Delorme has released their first handheld GPS. It’s model PN-20 and includes a lot of interesting features. The waterproof unit has a color screen and 75B internal memory with a SD slot for additional memory. It runs on 2 AA batteries, either standard or Lithium Ion.

The product site indicates it holds up to ten tracks (10,000 points per track); 1,000 user-defined waypoints; and 50 routes.

Delorme also provides $100 credit for downloading B&W or color satellite imagery or 7.5 min topo maps. The GPS allows you to select which map/imagery to see.

Delorme Topo is the client application that commmunicates with the GPS. It supports LOC and GPX files among other formats. You can create automatic road and trail routes, elevation profiles, and realistic 3-D flyovers.

The site currently shows three bundles which are available. The base GPS/software for $370, the GPS/software plus rechargeable battery kit for $410 and the GPS/software bundle with rechargeable battery kit and 1GB SD card for $450.

Check out the new PN-20 GPS at Delorme’s web site.

Garmin released an update to it’s Spanner program, now at version 2.1. The program should allow most USB connected Garmin units to output standard NMEA protocol. In addition, it seems to support multiple virtual COM ports which means you could run multiple programs simultaneously all accessing the same GPS.

You can download the Spanner program from Garmin’s site at http://www.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=1627

In another “geocache gone bad” incident, it seems a simple altoids container stuck to an electrical box has a geocacher in trouble.

Portsmouth police were the first to find Lord’s treasure box. And they got excited, too – but not in a good way.

Now Lord, 48, of Rochester, is wanted for questioning by police after his box was confiscated Sunday from an electrical panel outside the Shaw’s supermarket at Southgate Plaza.

“I’m so embarrassed,” Lord said last night. “I’ve heard of people who actually make their caches look like something more dangerous than they are. Then I look at mine, a little mint box. No wires. No gimmicks. I never intended to cause any trouble.”

Full story…

And a follow-up article – Geocacher expresses regret over leaving box behind Shaw’s