Making a ravel bug hotel

[Ragadash]

How do I make a travel bug Hotel

I would like to make a travel bug hotel for Finch Ontario Canada, in order to attract more trackables.

How do I do this?

The place: may be a park/playground in finch. Even if I got permission am I allowed to put one near a playground?

The Container: A cleaned out peanut butter Bottle. Works as a water proof cache. With green tape for camo. Will that work?

How do I make a travel bug hotel?

[Ragadash]

Any help would be appreciated

[+Glimmereyes]

How do I make a travel bug Hotel

Make a cache. Include the phrase "TB Hotel" in the name. Congrats on your TB hotel.

There is no functional difference between a "TB hotel" and any other traditional cache. Heck, your hotel doesn't even need to be a Traditional if you don't want it to be.

 

The place: may be a park/playground in finch. Even if I got permission am I allowed to put one near a playground?

As long as it's not a school playground, there is no special restrictions regarding caches and playgrounds. Although, many people (primarily males without kids) are not comfortable searching for caches around playgrounds, this will have an impact on how often your cache is visited.

 

The Container: A cleaned out peanut butter Bottle. Works as a water proof cache. With green tape for camo. Will that work?

PB jars tend to make good containers, but unless you've got an unusually large one, may not make the best TB hotel since they're not particularly large.

 

You'll want to wash it with a bleach mixture to make sure it's real clean and no longer smells like food. If it smells like food, animals will quickly damage the container. You might also want to mention that it was a PB jar so someone with a peanut alergy can decide if it's worth it, but a thorough bleach wash should remove the danger associated with it.

[+Gitchee-Gummee]

A cache is a cache is a cache....... doesn't matter what you want to call it.

 

About the park or playground, I think you should reconsider that thought.

 

Once the local kiddies discover it (and they will), things are gonna start disappearing. Would you want your Travel Bug or geocoin placed there, if you had any? I think not. If such is the case why would you want other cachers' trackables there?

Those items disappear well enough without added help.

 

Edit to add: As long as you wish to create a 'grand' cache such as a TB Hotel, why not do the effort and expense to make a good one? A peanut butter jar.... and you want to call it a Hotel, apparently not a 5-star Hotel.

Edited June 23, 2012 by Gitchee-Gummee

[+Don_J]

A cache is a cache is a cache....... doesn't matter what you want to call it.

 

About the park or playground, I think you should reconsider that thought.

 

Once the local kiddies discover it (and they will), things are gonna start disappearing. Would you want your Travel Bug or geocoin placed there, if you had any? I think not. If such is the case why would you want other cachers' trackables there?

Those items disappear well enough without added help.

 

Edit to add: As long as you wish to create a 'grand' cache such as a TB Hotel, why not do the effort and expense to make a good one? A peanut butter jar.... and you want to call it a Hotel, apparently not a 5-star Hotel.

 

I have to echo this. A cache full of other people property, (TBs), next to a playground just sounds like a very bad idea. You'll be setting up people's trackables to be stolen. Then again, that seems to be the result of most TB hotels.

 

Also note that you can not place trading restrictions on your hotel, such as trading one for one, or must leave a TB to take a TB. We call those types of hotels "Travel Bug Prisons", and it is against the guidelines as trackables are to be traded freely. They are not swag.

[+theclowndog]

I wouldn't leave trackables in a peanut butter jar in a playground/park. But that's just me. Some of the best TB hotels I've seen were close access to highways and interstates. Get a nice ammo can, they aren't that expensive and fit even the bigger trackables.

Edited June 23, 2012 by theclowndog

[+ngrrfan]

I wouldn't leave trackables in a peanut butter jar in a playground/park. But that's just me. Some of the best TB hotels I've seen were close access to highways and interstates. Get a nice ammo can, they aren't that expensive and fit even the bigger trackables.

(Bolding mine)

Add the word "secure" to that description and you have a good TB Hotel.

 

IMHO.... playgrounds are NOT a good place for a tb hotel.

[+briansnat]

As others mentioned, if you call it a travel bug hotel it's a travel bug hotel. There is nothing special about making one, other than perhaps ensuring that you have a container that will fit most travel bugs.

 

That said, please don't do it. For a travel bug hotel to be useful it needs to be easily accessible. Easily accessible caches are more likely to go missing. If a normal cache goes missing maybe one or two travel bugs go missing. If a TB hotel goes missing, we can lose a bunch. I had given out this advice for years and didn't heed it myself. I made a "geocoin hotel". It was stolen by a non geocacher (who actually emailed me to tell me he took it) and with it about a dozen geocoins went bye-bye.

Edited June 23, 2012 by briansnat

[+kunarion]

It was stolen by a non geocacher (who actually emailed me to tell me he took it).

Any time someone steals one of my TBs, or grabs one and then loses interest in Geocaching, I wish they would email me, or make a note log "I stole it" or whatever, so I don't have to wait and wonder before re-releasing it. But somehow I get the vibe that TB thieves are inconsiderate clods. Edited June 23, 2012 by kunarion

[+niraD]

Any time someone steals one of my TBs, or grabs one and then loses interest in Geocaching, I wish they would email me, or make a note log "I stole it" or whatever, so I don't have to wait and wonder before re-releasing it. But somehow I get the vibe that TB thieves are inconsiderate clods.

Great. Now I have coffee on my screen...

[+Dan2099]

As a grown man with no kids I would not visit a tb hotel at a kids playground...especially if I had to spend anytime hunting for it....Seems like caches there are asking for trouble.

 

The best tb hotel I have seen is called the Hyatt in Johnson city tn...it's HUGE made out of a steel locker with 5 individual 1ft lockers all padlocked..it's on a private business, and attached to there security gate...it was easier to find then a LPC.

Edited June 24, 2012 by Dan2099