RV Weekly Round-Up (June 6-12, 2009)

Check out these highlights of RV-related news, events and video from this past week. 1. Enter the Go RVing Video Contest: Go RVing is calling for entries in its first Internet video contest, hosted on Facebook. The “Tails from the Road” contest asks contestants to create a positive, humorous video featuring a pet traveling in an RV. Entries will be accepted from June 1 through July 10, by uploading your video to the Go RVing Facebook Fan Page. See the Go RVing webpage for full contest details. Read more  Read More →

GPS Navigation

Do we love GPS? Yes we do! GPS for the most part is new to the masses and now a necessity to most Americans. GPS was developed by the United States Department of Defense to aid in mapping and giving a precise location of troops deployed in the field. This new technology was a staple of the Army, Navy, Air force and Marines, and it eliminated the guessing game of where in the world are my troops. With this new technology they found they could mobilize their troops and have a coordinated timed response to any situation. Then in 1983 following the shooting down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 Ronald Reagan issued a directive making the system available for free for civilian use as a common good. The GPS system is a constellation of at least 24 Medium Earth Orbit satellites that transmit precise microwave signals, the system enables a GPS receiver to determine its location, speed, direction. You will find GPS devices every were, rental car companies now include them in their cars, they are showing up in boats, Mass transit vehicles, Police department vehicles and even in Cell phones. GPS has become a widely used aid to navigation worldwide, and a useful tool for map-making, land surveying, commerce, scientific uses, and hobbies such as geocaching. GPS also provides a precise time reference used in many applications including scientific study of earthquakes, and synchronization of telecommunications networks. As for me the writer of this article I have fallen in love with GPS I found... Read more

Road Testing MS Streets And Trips, Product Review (Part II)

Last week we looked at the workings and features of Microsoft’s Streets and Tips 2008. (A link to last week’s blog if you missed it LINK)  This week we are taking it to the street.   We’ll be testing the GPS navigation guidance in the real world.  I chose the City of Vancouver, Canada, to conduct the trial run.  In as much as I was not familiar with the areas of this city that I would be navigating, it would mean relying fully on the product’s ability to direct me.  I really did not doubt its ability to find and direct me to the target; after all, they will all do that.  It was how it does it, and the speed and timing. I set three targets, one after the other, all located in the Vancouver area.  I did this in the hotel prior to setting out.  Instead of doing each as a waypoint, I opted to enter each as a separate route, or trip, using my previous destination as the start of the next.  I made four routes that started with the hotel in Richmond, B.C., and finishing with the hotel as the final destination in the fourth route.  I saved each as a leg number, “Leg1, Leg2,” etc. The unit was fast to set up.  I put the GPS/antenna module, with tether line connected, onto the dashboard near the bottom of the windshield.  I then plugged the tether line into a USB port on my laptop computer and booted it up.  I selected the program icon and opened the program.  I then activated the GPS and selected my first saved route.  The time for... Read more

MS Streets & Trips 2008 GPS Product Review (Part 1)

It seems the popularity of GPS navigation continues to grow as more and more people turn from paper maps to LCD screens.  Just over two years ago I had four vehicles, only one of which had an on-board GPS navigation system.  Today, while I only have three vehicles, it is interesting to note that all three are equipped with on-board navigation.  All three have between 5″ and 7″ screen, a services data base, trip routing and voice guidance.  They do, however, have some short falls when it comes to trip planning, routing and making changes while on route.  So I jumped at the chance to try out the new 2008 Microsoft Streets and Trips full GPS offering.  Testing this in Canada would also add to the challenge as it is often found that many mapping software programs and related embedded data bases are not always up to date compared to that found throughout the U.S.A.   To properly evaluate the product, we will divide the trial into two sections.   First we will look at the general features and user friendliness including street level detail, route planning, data base, available tools and related functions.  We will follow that next week with a hands-on trial run, when we take it to the streets of the unfamiliar-to-me city, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.  I had used MS Streets and Trips before when I had an earlier version sometime around 2001.  At that time I found the program a great help for trip planning, distance calculating and just plain direction... Read more

Geocachers largest gathering in the world!

In approximately 1 month, geocachers from far and yon will begin to converge on a little town called Wheatland in Northern California. They will be there to take part in the largest annual gathering of geocachers in the world! GEOWOODSTOCK IV Saturday, May 24, 2008 in Wheatland, CA (just north of Sacramento) Just what is the this big hoop-tee-doo about? First a little history… Read more  Read More →

Geocaching in Armstrong Redwoods SNR

As promised, we continue our weekend excursion with a trip to Armstrong Redwoods State Natural Reserve just outside Guerneyville, CA. The best way to get to ARSNR is to take the Russian River Rd from US 101, then wind your way through some rolling winery country until you get to Guerneyville. Then take a right at the sign that points to ARSNR. We had researched the caches inside the Reserve before we left Santa Rosa. None seemed terribly difficult and we thought we would be able to get to all of them by the end of the day. Read more  Read More →

What we did last weekend…

As some of you may already know, we are currently workamping in Northern California. Santa Rosa to be exact. We are about 50 miles from San Francisco to the south and about 70 miles from Sacramento to the north east. Northern CA offers many interesting places to visit. We have been able to visit several while we have been here. Of course we always try to incorporate Geocaching into any trip we take, whether it be down to the corner store or half way around the world (or in this case, all the way across the US) This last weekend, we decided to visit Point Reyes National Seashore on Saturday (about 40 miles to the southwest along the Pacific coast) and Armstrong Redwoods State Park (about 30 miles to the north) Read more  Read More →

Now Let’s Really Go Geocaching!

As promised, in this blog post we’re going on a cache hunt! The following is a excerpt from one of our more memorable cache finds. There are many more than just this one for sure. In later blogs we’ll include a few more, but this one is special because of the physicality of getting to the location where the cache container is hidden. As an introduction, here is the cache owner’s description of the location, as listed on the cache page: Read more  Read More →

Navigating the Geocaching.com website

In this Blog, we will discuss how to navigate around the Geocaching.com website. For any of you who have gone to the Geocaching website and surfed around some, you may have found it a little intimidating. However, after you get used to navigating the pages, it will become very easy to find all kinds of interesting things available for you try. Let’s start on the Home Page Read more  Read More →

Geocaching terminology

In this post, we will discuss the meaning of all that garbledy gook you see other cachers write in their online logs, lingo used on Geocaching.com, and other definitions specific to the game. Archive This is usually seen when you own a cache. Archiving is basically deleting your cache from the listings on the web site. This usually occurs when you are not going to replace a cache after it has been removed. You can temporarily disable it as the cache owner if you plan to activate it again within a month. Benchmark Some people like to hunt USGS Benchmarks. Geocaching.com generally listed benchmarks that are closest to the caches that are hidden. See benchmark hunting for more details. Read more  Read More →

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