All Aboard

ALL ABOARD

We are off, 4am Pacific time and the Train is rolling out of the station. Some on the trip were surprised to see quads was up and ready to go at 3:45am which never happens. Here is the map you can follow us on. 

Wanna Ride

Wanna Ride 

So you wanna ride the Insane Train but got snubbed on the invite, or there is now way your body could do this without killing someone, or you live to far away to bribe us to let you go or you just cant afford a trip like this. Well we understand that is why we would like to invite you to ride virtually. We have four ways for you to join us on the trip. 

ONE

Follow us on Neongeo. There is a free thirty day full demo from the Google Play Store or it is a very affordable $4.26. Once you download this app you must go into the settings and turn on “Follow Me” You can set how accurate you show up on the map and how often it updates. You will be looking for Globaltreckers, Grizz Rider, Silly Me or quadsinthemudd.

 TWO

With Google Latitude I will have a live map on my blog that anyone can view from the web. It will be active only while we are on the trip. 

THREE 

One of the riders in our group is a twit so you can follow us on Twitter if you would like (hint globaltrecker). https://twitter.com/InsaneeTrain

Yip is has two e's at the end of Insanee, since Insane was taken John gave me some love by doubling up on the last letter. Maybe we should just change all of the spellings to Insanee

FOUR

Right here. At the end of the “day” (when we stop not 24 hours) I will do a blog post short or long, depends upon the “day”, what happened that “day”.

So hope to see some comments from you guys while we are out there and if you see us coming to your area come see us at the cache site but don’t be sad if we don’t stay long. Trains has to stay on schedule.

The final not set in stone route! But here it is.

The final not set in stone route! But here it is.

So we have a finalish route. Two cachers on the Insane train want to make GC70 Octopus Garden a milestone so they hounded me on how many and which caches we were going to find before we got GC70, so I planned day 1 down to gas and pee breaks so they would shut up Steve and Brian! I have not planned every single gas and food stop on day two and three of the driving days because we are going to be real tired and just play it by ear. GasBuddy and the car are going to tell us where we need to stop at in between the planned caches for each state. And if it gets to much we can cut a ton of time off our route by taking off the oldest cache in Arkansas and even dropping the  Virginia and West Virginia. But don't count on that happening because we are insane I mean really insane I just didn't want to take all the time to plan every detail for the days we would be driving in the daylight. Plus we will have all day 1 and night and day 1 still to look at the route to add any little caches we want. 

So here is a turn by turn PDF of our route. From Dallas to Gastonia we are going too try and stay on schedule but after that it is anybody's guess. And the Hotels are not set in stone either.

Thanks Mrs. Quads for South Dakota

Thanks Mrs. Quads for South Dakota

We have now found a cache in 46% of the states in the United States. It was a tag team effort on this cache but we made the find together even though we are 839.7 miles apart.  Here is my log for the cache GCYP6Y  Eastbound Rest Stop @MM218 Oh and thanks for the mile marker number in the cache name really helped a ton.

This cache was a tag team effort by the quads. Mr Quads was back at home looking at the map while Mrs. Quads was driving to Indiana from SE Washington. We didn't have South Dakota so I made the route through SD so the Mrs. could get it. I noticed this morning she had not gotten a cache near the hotel in Rapid City where she stayed last night, knew she wasn't real good with the smart phone apps and really didn't care all that much she just wants to get to her parents house as soon as she could. Yes I know she probably thought about how much I really wanted us to get SD but she just my play the I forgot card because it was going to waste way to much time. Not a chance I was going to let that happen. I used Google Latitude to see how far across SD she had made it and then panned across the map to the east to see if I could find a rest stop cache and yours is the lucky guy. I knew it was going to be a bit tough to get her to use the Geocaching apps on the phone so I zoomed in on the satellite imagery to see if I could just direct her from halfway across the country. BINGO and easy to direct hide! So I called her and she was only 8 miles away. I was able to direct her to the fifth parking stall and tell her exactly what to look under and she had it in hand in no time. Log was very wet and needs some love but that is OK for us because we have SOUTH DAKOTA NOW!!!!! Plus just a few more days till I leave on the Insane Train and get 13 more states! Check us out mrquads.blogspot.com Thanks for the rest stop cache so my kids and wife could pee and I could get SD....I mean WE could get SD Love you Hunny;)

So as we site at 46% of the states all I can think of is the 13 states we are going to get next weekend to bring my percentage up to 72% in one weekend! 

Aided by Apps

Aided by Apps

This Insane Train will be aided by apps all the way. From finding caches to allowing us to be seen on a live map. So here is a rundown of some of the apps we will be using. Note we all have android phones so these apps may not be available on iphones, windows phones or a Blackberry.

Neongeo

this app is my favorite geocaching app. I have used cache sense, cgeo, geocaching.com app and Neongeo and found this one to be the best for me, plus the paid version is only $4.26(free is a full use version limited to 30 days). I use Neongeo when I want to grab some quick caches or have a few minutes and want to look for caches all over the world.  I love the how easy it is to use and the compass on the map screen makes it the closest to my garmins for finding caches. Then when I find the cache I can upload a pic I took or take one while writing the log. Also I love the friend follow feature on Neongeo so my friends all over can see where I’m caching and I can see them when they are caching.

GasBuddy

 

This app is AWESOME when you travel because it helps find the lowest priced gas. I have adjusted what states we stop for gas in and will save .30 a gallon just by stopping 20 miles early. This app only works if the users are posting prices so we will be helping out as we drive since three of us will be siting for hours without anything to do.

Google Latitude

I will be turning on public follow while on our trip so anyone who goes to my blog can track our progress from the web just by going to that post and viewing the map no registration is needed.  This is included in Google maps so no special app is needed. We hope you like this feature on the blog. We used it last year but the cell service I had was not as good as it is now.

Kayak

This app searches web sites for the best price on hotels flights and cars. I use it search for potential hotels and then try and get a better price by calling direct or visiting the hotels  web site. With Kayak you can tell it to search for rooms for 4 adults or even multiple rooms, so this is why I don’t use priceline or Hotwire because I need to know for a fact we have two beds. I also use them on the web before or trip for planning flights. Try them you’ll like them.

Hotels.com

I never like to go with the first bit of information I get. Plus  I get a free nights stay after 10 nights and if I am going to stay at a hotel that uses Hotels.com I am going to book it through this app. Sometimes you can get a better deal and you can tell it 4 adults so no  hassle at the front desk.

Motel 6

Just in case we want to go super cheap and fast. With four people it gives us the option of a deciding if we want the free breakfast from a $100.00 a night hotel or some drive through breakfast after a $50.00 Motel 6 room.

Trip it

This website and app take all our reservations and confirmations and keeps them in one nice and tidy spot. All I have to do is pull up this trip and my itinerary with confirmation numbers, dates and times are all in one handy app.

Southwest

 

I advise anyone who is traveling to use the app of the company you are traveling with to help you know delays and any information you can get without having to go up to the counter. I just traveled back from North Dakota and used the Amtrak app and I was able to see that my train was late and an estimated time of arrival. No phone calls no getting to the station an hour to early.

Flight Aware

Okay this one is just because I am a airplane nerd. You can see where the airplanes are headed to that fly over me. Also I can see John’s flight in the air and know if he is on time or not. Really this one is just for me to kill time.

These are the apps that I use and find that they come in very handy at times, I would love to hear from you if you have a favorite android app for caching/traveling.

First state caches on our route

First state caches on our route

Here is the list of caches that are on our trip that were the first ones hidden in each state and still active.

1 Mississippi   GC90 10/19/2000 Bonita Lakes

2 Alabama  GC12601/02/2001 Trussville Civitan

3 Georgia GC1D 06/03/2000 Beaver Cache

4 North Carolina GC70 09/30/2000 Octopus Garden

5 Tennessee GC132 01/06/2001 LPS001

6 Arkansas GC1B  06/27/2000 Gorilla Stash

7 Texas GC62 09/26/2000 Tombstone

Now here is the other states we plan to get

8 Louisiana

9 Florida

10 South Carolina

11 Virginia

12 West Virginia

13 Oklahoma

So don’t forget to follow us on Neongeo or latitude and if you can meet up with us along the trail.

Come meet us!

Come meet us! 

The Insane Train have an event posted now in Tennessee near the state’s first ever geocache GC4CY6G . Sunday June 9th from 9am-10am Then we will be off to get the first cache in Tennessee LPS001 before heading out on the rest of our trip . Come visit us if you can. 

You will also be able to follow our progress on Google Latitude and Neongeo while we are on the trip.  To follow us on Google Latitude I will post a blog post that has a map you can check to see our progress.
Neongeo is a geocaching app for android phones that has a friend follow feature on it. When enabled you can see the locations of other cachers around the world who also have friend follow enabled. If you do not currently have Neongeo on your phone you can download a free 30 day trial. I use this program to cache with when I use my phone so you may see quadsinthemudd from time to time on it all year long.