Geoscouting

for Garmin devices. I bought the North American topos on Amazon.com two years ago for use on my GPS Map60CSx. Seemed like the best price at the time. You can pick different quadrangles from the full set of maps to download to your gps instead of installing them all. I'm not sure about the 350 but will assume you could load them as a second set of maps on and SD card and leave City Navigator as the main map. At least that's what I do.

or Geocaching is a ton of fun, but most automotive GPS units don't have the features needed to do it properly (compass, battery life, etc).

I use my Nuvi 765t to get close to caches near regular roads but switch to either my Garmin 60CSX or Garmin Oregon 550 to go off-road and zero in on the cache. Other than my Nuvi I have no maps loaded on my handled GPS's as they are not needed in most cases.

Any handheld GPS that will allow the loading on waypoints / poi's can be used to geocache, you dont need to spend big money on a hand held GPS to do a fine job of finding caches.

A great site that covers geocaching in great detail is www.geocaching.com.

There are hundreds of thousands of hidden caches in the US, within 20 miles of my house (Houston, Tx) there are 3,000 caches

BTW, I don't not know of any way to add a compass to an automotive unit, others may know of something.

I use a Garmin nuvi 750 to geocache. I bought a replacement battery and did the install myself and I’m happy with the results. When I get near the cache or to the end of the roads I switch from automobile mode to pedestrian mode. I also switch from faster time to off road mode. This lets me zero in on the cache. www.geocaching.com can download cache locations directly to your nuvi. They become favorites on your system.

You can also enter geocaches by entering coordinates directly into your system as one of the where to options.

Compass: If you press the arrival time (lower left) it will show you the distance at the upper right, this screen will also show what direction you are moving.

Accuracy: from the main screen press and hold down on the signal strength bars. A screen will appear with your current lat/long show the accuracy reading.

I put the system in “lock” mode some of the time to save power when I know where I’m heading.

I choose to use my nuvi to cache and it works. I have borrowed and used a good handheld GPSr model and found it nicer for geocaching and easier on the batteries. With a handheld GPSr and 8 rechargeable AAs in my backpack it means running out of power isn’t an issue.

They now make some very cool GPSr models for paperless geocaching. Google “paperless geocaching gps” if you want to learn more.

These work very well for geocache. I joined the club and did it for a week or so just to try it. The Explorist will route to a nearby street. Then walk toward the POI. If the point was marked properly, my unit could get me within 5 feet or so. It was kinda fun. It should be great for family outings.