Support Hoagies' Page!

Click on Shop Hoagies' Page before you visit your favorite on-line stores including Amazon, Highlights, Chinaberry, Prufrock Press, MindWare and many more, year-round and at the holidays.  Thanks for your support!

Donations
Your donations also help keep Hoagies' Gifted Education Page on-line.

Geocaching 102: Using Premium membership features

by Carolyn K. director, Hoagies' Gifted Education Page

New to Geocaching?  Read Geocaching 101: Finding Your First Cache first.  Need a refresher on the acronyms and terms of Geocaching?  Visit Geocaching 101: Acronyms

I'm a Geocaching.com Premium member.  Now what?

Geocaching.com Premium Membership gives you a variety of additional benefits.  You can seek and log "premium members only" caches.  You can generate statistics and reports, schedule queries to run on the Geocaching.com cache database.  And you can find caches along a route, making road trips much more interesting and rest stops more than just a break from the monotony of the road.  And Premium Membership supports the ongoing work of the Geocaching.com website, and the game of Geocaching all over the world.

Get Instant Notifications!

Being first-to-find (FTF) a new cache is fun, and in some areas, there's a great competition to be FTF.  How do those folks all know when a new cache is published so quickly?  Simple!  There's a premium member feature that allows you to find out instantly when a new cache is published in your area. 

Visit the Add Instant Notification page, and set up your first notification.  Give it a name, and select the type of caches you'd like to be notified of first; most geocachers start with Traditional caches, but you might also set up a notification for Multi-caches, Event caches, or other cache types.  Next check off the conditions you'd like to be notified of: Publish listing will notify you when a new cache is placed, while Enable Listing will notify you when temporarily disabled caches become available again.

By default, the notification will center around your home latitude and longitude, but if you prefer you can center the search somewhere else.  Set up a notification for somewhere you travel regularly, or somewhere you're planning to visit next summer!  Specify the distance that your notifications should cover, and the address you'd like the e-mail notifications delivered to.  Voila!  You're on your way to getting instant notifications of exciting new caches in your area!

Finding caches along a route.

When you're traveling, it's often useful to find the closest caches to your route.  This is easily accomplished when you're a Premium member.  Simply to to your Profile page (click on your name in the upper right) and scroll down to Premium Features in the right column.  Select Build Pocket Queries, and near the top of the page, click on Find Caches Along a Route.  Click on the tab to Create New Route.  Enter a name for your route, for example Route to Gramma's House, and click Create Route.  Fill in the From: and To: fields for your route, including as much detail as you have available.  Routes can be house to house, or town to town, or whatever you'd like.  Click Search. 

Now is your chance to fine-tune your route.  Don't like the default route?  Perhaps you prefer a more rural path, or to avoid a certain bridge when you travel.  Use drag-and-drop to pick up and move the blue line of your route to the route you prefer.  Once you are satisfied, move below the map and select your Search Radius Hint.  For a direct route with few side trips, select 0.1 miles radius; for more variety, select a higher radius.  Then Save Route Changes, and on the next screen enter any description and keywords you want to add, choose if you want your route to be available in the public directory of routes, and click Save.

Now you're ready to use your route.  Click on Your Created Routes and click the Create Pocket Query beside the route you need now.  This time you can make many more selections and clarifications to your query:

Submit Information, and your query will be scheduled.  When the results are available, you'll receive an e-mail telling you where to download the results. But stop here!  This is where you can use the query right away, right on your computer screen!

Click Preview the Search and you'll get a list of the caches that match your query.  And click on the Map It icon, and you can see the map of all the caches!  Use the map to move around, zoom in, and find caches that are most convenient for your trip!  If you're traveling on highways, be sure to note if the caches are on or off the highway, and if they're available only in one direction (northbound but not southbound, for example).

Getting statistics on My Finds.

My Finds is a standard query that Premium Members can run no more than once a week.  Once you run and download your My Finds query, you can then upload it to a variety of web tools to create your caching statistics report.  One such tool is the Geocaching Swiss Army Knife (GSAK). GSAK offers all sorts of benefits, including macros to create neat personal statistics, the ability to combine various geocaching site statistics and searches, and lots more.  And best of all, it's free for 21 days, so you can try it out!

Updated April 10, 2012