Kindle for reading.... and Geocaching??

One of my family's newest hobbies this year has been Geocaching. If you've never heard it, it's an activity that uses government satellite equipment to find tupperware in the woods ☺ In other words: using your GPS to find "caches", little treasures ranging from 1/2 inch to 5 gallon buckets filled with "stuff", a.k.a. trinkets or swag.

We began doing it earlier this year. It's fantastic for families, with or without the dog, for any age group and any fitness level. You can practically park your car on some caches, or hike miles for others. There are over a million of them around the world so there really is something for everyone.

So, how does the Kindle come into it?  Well, I load up co-ordinates of caches I select to my GPS (currently a very basic Garmin nuvi 1200) from Geocaching.com and then either make some notes or print them out with a bit more info. The info might contain clues, what size cache we're looking for, what the terrain is like etc. Then in the evening, I go back online and log which ones we found and which we didn't.

Yesterday we decided to test how the Kindle could join in!  First off, I created a bookmark list of caches on the Geocaching.com website. Then, while at home, I opened the page from my Kindle (Menu > Wireless On, then Menu > experimental > Basic Web).

Once I had their website up and found the relevant list in my profile, I bookmarked it. (Menu > Bookmark this page).


Now what? Let's go caching! 

How did Kindle help??

Well, naturally I could get wireless signal on my 3G Kindle wherever I had a cell phone service. Unlike accessing the internet from my phone, I can access from Kindle for free. Although it's slow, I was able to access all our planned caches, look at the clues and previous logs, and even log my visit - saving me time later that evening.

Now, it is slow. I am not denying that. And I found it easier to keep clicking menu/ bookmarks to get to the right page, rather than navigate through the site all the time but it was helpful. I didn't need to drag a notebook and a pen and numerous notes around with me.

Now I want a Kindle 3 even more, since the web browser is apparently more streamlined than the Kindle 2. And I wonder what other activities we could get our Kindle involved with??