Help with my Garmin eTrex H?

Question

So I just got a "Garmin eTrex H" as my grad present and wanna try geocaching which I've done with my uncle before. Where do I find coordinates for some geocaches nearby and how do I enter them????

Answer 1

www.geocaching.com/  is by far the site with the largest list of caches.  They also have articles that will help you get started.

http://dir.groups.yahoo.com/dir/37500000... will give you a listing of yahoo groups about geocaching.  I am not a member of any of them but expect that there are probably a couple that might be helpful to a beginner.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/etrex_lege... and http://groups.yahoo.com/group/etrex/ both have people who are willing to help beginners with their etrex GPSs

Answer 2

Go to geocaching.com and sign up for a membership.  It is free, and you have to be a member to see the geocache coordinates.  You can look up geocaches based on your postal code, latitude/longitude, and other ways.

There are a couple of ways to enter coordinates onto your eTrex H.  One way is to send the coordinates to your GPS receiver from the computer.  You would download a .loc file from the geocache page to your computer, then use a free program called EasyGPS to send the coordinates to your eTrex.  There are other programs that do this too.

You can also enter the coordinates manually.  Just make sure the eTrex is using the same coordinate format as the geocaching website.

If you need more help, I suggest going to forums.groundspeak.com.  It is run by the same people who run the geocaching.com website.  There are tons of people there who will welcome you to the sport and help you out with any technical issues.

I also recommend checking the manual for your eTrex for further instructions about connecting to the computer or manually entering the coordinates.