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Travel Bug Only Caches


J-Man

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After seeing that many bugs get stranded for a long time, I decided to try a new approach... I made a travel bug only cache, and placed it near the airport here in Los Angeles. Hopefully, whenever people are going out of town (or coming in...), they'll stop by the cache and grab a bug.

 

The idea is to get a sort of Travel Bug Railroad system going, so with luck, this idea will catch on in other cities.

 

The only things to remember when placing this type of cache are that the cache must be large to accomodate bugs that need more legroom, and they must be very low-profile. In these days of heightened security, we wouldn't want to alarm airport officials by having it be too close to the airport. icon_eek.gif

 

I tagged mine with the name Grand Central Station in the hopes of getting a railroad theme going with them. If they catch on, maybe they could get their own cache icon on the Geocaching page....

 

Please post your thoughts icon_cool.gif

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I considered one near the intersection of two interstates around here, but someone beat me to the park I was going to use - and it's a good cache. Oh well.

 

But there are many more cachers than there are Travel Bug advocates. Even if you try to set up a Travel Bug Only cache, it will get found by other cachers who are out there just to up their count. I would guess that over 50% of the cachers that find your Travel Bug Only cache are going to be "TN/LN/SL" maybe with the added comment of "Didn't have a Travel Bug, so I just signed the book".

 

Just my guess.

 

Markwell

My Geocaching Page

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quote:
Originally posted by J-Man:

 

I tagged mine with the name Grand Central Station in the hopes of getting a railroad theme going with them. If they catch on, maybe they could get their own cache icon on the Geocaching page....

 

Please post your thoughts icon_cool.gif


 

Sorry J-Man, I didn't realise that you had hoped to maintain a railroad theme when I posted this thread on the UK forum. It seems that we (in the UK) have adopted the theme of "Bug Hotel" in the title in the format of "airport/station name" followed by "Bug Hotel" as in Heathrow Bug Hotel The idea of keeping a standard type of name was to make it easy to do a search on the Geocaching.com site. ie. doing a search for "Bug Hotel" would show all this type of cache.

 

The cachers who placed this cache (Dave & Nicky) have followed J-Mans lead with the rest though, just a large-ish cache with nothing in it except for the log-book and pen.

 

I think this is a great idea and we should try to expand the coverage. As there are other caches with a similar purpose or at least well placed for it, is there another way we could signify that a cache is just for helping TB's so that searches can be conducted easily ?

 

One last thing, for obvious reasons it is important that bugs placed in these caches have their goal attached to them or listed in the log-book.

 

Tim & June (Winchester)

 

To cache, or not to cache. That is the question !

Oh to hell with the work. icon_smile.gif

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J-Man:

I am not exactly sure how it will work. Is your cache actually in the airport, so people can get to it between connecting flights? Or is it out side of the airport so people have to leave the airport to do drop offs and pick ups?

I live in Boston and could put one at Logan, which is also a very busy airport.

Give me some suggestion please

and feel free to email me.

Rage of Connor's Clan icon_smile.gif

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In reference to Connor Clan's question, no, It's not actually IN the airport. I don't recommend that.... It's about 1 minute away from the airport so that if you are on your way to or from, you could make a quick stop. heck, you could even get to it if you had a bit of a layover.

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I had the same idea, and thought I was being so original. icon_rolleyes.gif My plan was (and still is) to place a "Bug Depot" at a spot near an airport and the junction of an Interstate and a major State Highway.

However, I think that the important part of a name for these type of caches is that the name itself clearly indicates what it is. If I'm driving across country, I'm not necesarily going to closely read the description of every cache along the way. But if I see one titled "Bug Hotel" or "Bug Depot" or even "Buggabo" I'll probably check it closer to see if it's one where I can pick up or drop off a bug to help it on it's journey. I wouldn't necessarily read every cache with a railroad theme, as there are many that aready have that theme, and have nothing to do with travel bugs.

I did see somebody else did a couple caches in Maryland called "Bug Depots", but with a strange rule that if you take a bug, you need to leave a bug. I don't see how that really helps the bugs get moving faster. What if there's a bug there that needs to go to Germany, and I happen to be leaving for Deutschland tomorrow but don't have a bug to trade it with. I guess that bug just missed a great ride.

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quote:
If (God forbid) the cache got looted or removed, quite a few Bugs would go missing in one shot.


Well, as with any cache, it's important for the person hiding it originally, to pick a spot where it's very unlikely any non-geocachers will stumble across it.

But as for a dishonest "geocacher" doing the looting, well that can happen with ANY cache.

Plus, I can't imagine most bug only caches would have a lot of bugs waiting in them. I would think bugs would normally get dropped off and picked up pretty quickly (unless there's a dumb take-a-bug/leave-a-bug rule).

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What do you think of trying to aid the problem of travel bugs that go nowhere by conferencing with the "Cache Across America" group? We could try to set up a series of travel bug caches that would be set up so that a cacher would know to advance the bug by going to a specific next cache, or by a reminder to log in and then find the next cache in line for the direction implied by the TB's goal.

 

Also, by doing this, we could, in advance pick certain caches that are big enough to hold a bug and easy enough to get some traffic, and make them mailboxes for the bugs. icon_wink.gif

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Well, I just posted my Travel Bug Depot cache as mentioned above. Since we get very few Travel Bugs out this way, hopefully this might attract a few? If nothing else, it should help push the new bugs here out towards their goals quicker.

 

--- Two paths diverged in a wood, and my... my GPSr pointed dead center between them. ---

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I think bug hotels/depots/caches are a great idea, and I'd like to thank team C.H.U.M.P for allowing the Showcase Boyz to start off their travel bug race in the Have Bug, Will Travel geocache. The bugs were dropped off today (5/14/02) by Team Rex, while on vacation in AZ.

 

Mike (The DirtMan) Pellerin

aka Badger

dirtman@iname.com

 

Jason Dobson

aka "Jay" "J"

Myth8499@aol.com

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I just took it off of Member's Only status. It has seen twelve different bugs so far, despite the limited number of human visitors:

 

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.asp?ID=22440

 

As is implied in the cache description, people can come by for whatever reason suits them.

 

-WR

 

"Why worry when you can obsess?"

 

[This message was edited by WaldenRun on May 20, 2002 at 11:55 AM.]

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quote:
I just took it off of Member's Only status
Come to think of it, Bug Hotels are about the best case I can think of for "Registered Users Only" caches (only visible to folks who have logged in to geocaching.com), if they existed, because if folks aren't registered on geocaching.com then they're not going to be able to grab and subsequently drop bugs...

 

Purrs... LazyLeopard http://www.lazyleopard.org.uk

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