Caches along a route

[nonnipoppy]

If you are a premimim member of GC.com and you have the free program Google Earth you now have access to caches along a route and it is waaaaaaaasyyyyy cooooool!!!

Look at your My Account page at GC.com for the instructions and enjoy.......poppy

[Gaddiel]

This project has been a long time coming. Lots of people have been asking about this for years. Glad to see they were able to finally work something out. When I looked, there was already a route that included our zip code (Little Rock to Chicago).

Wayne

[nonnipoppy]

After a bit more research I think it can also be done in Mapsource instead of Google Earth.

[Team_Pink]

Man oh Man, Am I happy to see this finally done!

I just started looking at it. How do you specify the distance from the route?

[Team_Pink]

Never mind, it's in the pocket query!

[OldRiverRunner]

I had just posted an entry about this feature in another forum topic area, when I ran across this one while browsing the rest of the forum topics! It is a GREAT tool! I've created a few routes to see how it works and it is SO EASY! This will definitely save me LOTS of time setting up my cache list when I make cross-country driving trips in the future! -- ORR

[Team_Pink]

Question:

If you create a pocket query from the route will it pick up new caches created after the pocket query was created? I'm guessing you have to create a new pocket query every so often, otherwise it will only keep the caches up to date that were found when the pocket query was generated. In other words, if you create a pocket query in January and don't take the trip until August you may miss caches placed between January and August. Being as easy as it is, it's really not a big deal but if it truly works that way, it would be worth knowing.

[OldRiverRunner]

Question:

If you create a pocket query from the route will it pick up new caches created after the pocket query was created? I'm guessing you have to create a new pocket query every so often, otherwise it will only keep the caches up to date that were found when the pocket query was generated. In other words, if you create a pocket query in January and don't take the trip until August you may miss caches placed between January and August. Being as easy as it is, it's really not a big deal but if it truly works that way, it would be worth knowing.

The short answer is no. When you run a pocket query, it only picks up the caches that exist at that time. To pick up new caches at a later date, you have to run the query again. However, as long as you don't select the "Run this query once then delete it" option, you don't have to recreate the pocket query each time. It will just be saved in your list of pocket queries and you can run it anytime you want to by opening it up again and selecting the day of the week you want to run it. You can save up to 40 queries. -- ORR

[nonnipoppy]

As I understand this feature you create a route and upload it or you select a route someone else uploaded and made public. You then can create a PQ based on that route as often as you like (within the confines of GC.com policy).

Going to Dallas from Clarksville can be accomplished traveling several different routes. I can select as many different routes as desired and get a pq for them.

I did a public route from Dallas to Houston and the PQ returned 35 caches. Doing it the Google Earth/bookmark method yielded 8 or 10 fewer caches. That was probably operator error on my part but the new feature was really handy.

[Team_Pink]

I was thinking the pocket query only used the route information the first time it ran and then just updated that same list of caches each time it ran after that, but that wouldn't make sense! As usual I make it harder than what it is!

It truly is a great feature and has been a long time coming. I wish there was no milage limitation on it but it's not a big problem. I wanted to create a route to Portand, Oregon and had to break it down into several legs.

Here is another "let me make this difficult when it is supposed to be easy" pondering. I used Streets and Trips and GSAK to do caches along a route before this came along and it involved putting stops along the route. When the road has a hump in it like this:

---------------^----------

and the hump was larger than the distance from the road parameter, I had to put stops the point of the hump or I would miss a cache now and then. I wonder what the resolution is on the new pocket queries. It would be on the Google Earth part of the process in how many points it generated that would determine that.

If I get a chance later, I may just try a route here in Arkansas where I have all the data and compare a route generated with GSAK and Streets and Trips and compare it to the Groundspeak one. It probably would be a small difference and not worth the worry, but I'm all about making things difficult! Just look at my DNF list!

:)