Thoughts On Travel Bugs

In my post about Introducing Some To Geocaching I mentioned that we found a travel bug in with the cache.  The frustrating thing was that the cache was supposed to be a travel bug hotel, the inventory indicated about six bugs when we went looking for it.

Now I wouldn't have taken all of them, though I do like to log them as "discovered" when there is more than one in a cache.  The missing bugs got me thinking though, wow many times have I, or you, gone to a cache expecting to find a travel bug, only to find out that someone either removed it without logging it or placed it in the cache online, while secretly keeping the travel bug? 

I enjoy finding travel bugs and I can understand the desire to keep one (with the original owners permission of course), but it is frustrating to think that I have checked a cache that was supposed have a travel bug and come up empty almost as often as actually finding them.  I have even found some bugs that were logged into a different cache in another state. 

If you find and move a travel bug or geocoin, make sure that you log it.  If you hold on to it for more than two weeks or so, send the owner an email letting them know that you will be moving the item along soon, then follow through.

Do you have any interesting travel bug stories?  Let us here them in the comment section below.

What is geocaching?
Geocaching Definitions
Hiding Geocaches

Hiding Geocaches

Since my son and I got to go geocaching last week, my wife and I decided that we would try to use our afternoon to find some caches with the whole family.  We loaded up several sets of waypoints into the GPSr.  We found some near the school and several at nearby parks that the kids like.  We also found a couple containers and bottles that we could use to make our own caches.  We got some camouflaged tape and covered up the bottles so they would blend in to their surroundings better.  Into each cache we put some paper cut into strips, for logs and the larger bottles got a couple small toys for trade.

Can you spot the geocache?  The first one I hid.

We started off at a park, just down the street from the school.  It has an old tractor next to the playground for the kids to play on.  The kids affectionately know it as the Tractor Park.  We decided that this would be a good location for our first cache.  The kids played for awhile before we placed the cache.  After finding a little over 170 caches, it was nice to finally give back a little and hide something for a change.  So after hiding the new cache and marking it with the GPSr, we headed off to find some caches.

A larger geocache with a label, just in case it is found by accident.

We ended up trying for nine caches spread apart through several parks, open spaces and even next to a couple businesses.  Most of the caches we found were little micro caches that only contained a log book.  Fortunately, we did find a larger cache, pictured at the left.  This one had several toys in it and we traded a miniature soccer ball that we had for a little car.  We also left the geocoin that I had picked up last week.  See the post here.

We found all nine caches that we were looking for.  We thought one was going to be a Did Not Find (DNF), but after looking hard for about ten minutes, our oldest daughter finally found it.  Looking at the size of it, it is pretty obvious why it was so hard to see.  It was one of the smallest size microcaches that you can use.  You can see below how small it was.

When they said micro cache, they weren't kidding.

The kids were tired after the several hour trip.  In all we found nine caches and hid the first two of our own.  I quickly posted our first two hides, interestingly within a couple hours I received e-mail notifications that they had been published to www.geocaching.com, and then found shortly after.  It was another fun day with the kids, any day geocaching and hiking around with the kids is a good day.

Some previous posts on caching:

Geocaching with Children

Geocaching Definitions

Geocaching Around Town

Today I had to pick up my son from school, but had several hours before I had to go into work.  I decided that since it would just be the two of us, we might as well do some geocaching.  Geocaching with kids can be a lot of fun, to them it is like a treasure hunt.  My son loved the idea of looking for some caches after school.  We ran home and cooked up a pizza to fuel our hunting.  Once it was done, we set off with eight geocaches loaded into the GPSr to find.  If you want any tips on geocaching with kids, check out my previous blog post here.

Since we didn't have a lot of time, all of the caches we were looking for would be located around the city.  Some where in nearby parks, several of them were right in parking lots.  The picture below depicts a fairly common parking lot type cache. 

A typical "skirt lift" geocache.

Several of the days caches were on or near light posts, as this one was.  But, with plenty of parks located around where we live, there were also a couple caches hidden in or around trees.  These can be challenging, there are a surprising number of ways that a cache can be hidden around or in a tree.  It all depends on the size of the cache and how hard the person wanted to hide it.  This was one that took us a few minutes, but wasn't too difficult, can you find the cache in the picture below?

Can you spot this geocache?

A Geocoin displaying the "Earth Cache" symbol.

One of my favorite parts about geocaching, is find the trackable items.  These are often referred to as Travel Bugs, or Geocoins.  They have a unique code on them that corresponds to a web page on the http://www.geocaching.com/ website.  The code and the web page allow you to log where you found the coin and what geocache you put the coin in later.  I had a Geocoin from before and while we were out we found this earth Geocoin, pictured to the right.  We left the Geocoin we had and picked this one up to take to a new cache.  Ideally you take the new coin as far as possible before placing it.  Always check the web page for the coin to see if it has any specific directions or locations that the owner wants it to visit.  If the want it to go from New York to California, you should probably try to move west, rather than east. 

Overall we both had a lot of fun, one of the geocaches eluded us, so we will be coming back for that one later.  But any day that I can spend outside with my son is a good day.

Geocaching Definitions