Here in Maine, we’ve had such wet weather, I sent the Geomate Jr. on vacation with a friend who was traveling a lot this summer. She is new to geocaching, and was struggling with her GPS. The following is from her first email about the Geomate Jr.:
July:
Just flew in last night from Pittsburgh, and I have to tell you–that Geomate Jr. you loaned me was a HIT with my great nephew. He found three of them, and it worked just great! I believe my niece is going to get him one for Christmas!!!
I’ll be leaving for Vegas (Laughlin, actually) on Tuesday, and I’ll be giving it a run for its money out there. I think that with the updated downloads, that would be my preference over the GPS that I’ve been using. It’s just way too powerful and confusing!!!
Hope you are having a wonderful summer, and I want to thank you again for letting me test this toy! I feel that I may actually get one with the upgrades for myself if it continues to perform the way it did in Pittsburgh!!!
Jan
Another update from travels with Jan:
August
Now for the Geomate Jr. When I took it to Pittsburgh with me, I also took my GPS. I let my nephew use the Geomate, and I’m here to tell you, we had a BALL!!! That Jr. worked absolutely great, and my nephew had an experience which has now turned him on to geocaching. In fact, my niece is planning on getting him a Geomate Jr. for Christmas this year. He’s 13 years old and going into eighth grade.
In addition, I took it with me to Laughlin, NV, and we went along the riverwalk in search of a micro cache. We didn’t find it, but I KNOW we were right in the correct vicinity–we just couldn’t find that tiny hide. It was incredibly hot there this year–117 degrees. So, we didn’t got out again. Before I left on vacation, I used it around here, and I invited a neighbor to go with me and use it. She had a ball!!! Again, I think we’ve got another cacher!
The only drawback I have is that I wish it had more loaded locations–which is probably what the additional USB probably has, right???? (right) Anyhow, I’m considering getting one for myself and maybe selling the powerful GPS because it has waaaaayyyy too much power for what I need.
May:
We also tried out the Geomate Jr., (for photos: http://geomatejr.com/products) as I mentioned earlier, I tried it before hand, and marked the geocache I found, as ‘found’ on the
Geomate. That was probably not a good idea, because when we returned, it had disappeared from the list of local caches. I’ll back up a bit and explain the Geomate Jr a bit. It is a small, handheld device for locating geocaches in the area you are located. Starting with the closest, it shows location information of the 20 closest caches. It is extremely simple to use, and very accurate. When the kids and I headed to the local mountain to find the one I found the day before, my daughter turned on the Geomate, and it picked up the signal quickly, and showed the closest cache as being 1.3 miles away. I knew that wasn’t right, because it was only about 700 ft away. Well, that was because I had marked it as found the day before, and the Geomate was smart enough to move on to the next closest cache. So, off we went to the next cache. It was an easy one, and the kids found it right away just by using the Geomate. There are two buttons on the front of the device – one to cycle through the menu, and one to select which item you want. The power button is at the top, and there is a rubber area on the side that you press and then you can slide the battery cover off. It is very easy to figure out, even if you leave the directions at home, lol. I made a couple of mistakes in the beginning, like trying to find caches located near where we were going, instead of waiting until we got there. The Geomate finds and shows the 20 closest geocaches to where you are at the time. Once you have marked a cache as found, there doesn’t seem to be a way of having it show up again. With 250,000 caches pre-installed, running out shouldn’t be a problem. There are plans for updating the device, so new geocaches can be added to the database. It also showssize of cache, terrain, difficulty rating and the Geocaching.com ID code for each cache. Keep in mind, this is not a GPS, in that you can’t pull up maps, or save tracks. It is a very cool geocaching tool, that leads the user to the geocache, in a simple, reliable manner. We’ll be using it again soon, and will report back. It iss going to Wisconsin with me next, so I’ll see how well I do with it in an unfamiliar area.
