How do I find local Travel Bugs?

[+jonnycouk]

I seem to remember being able to search for Travel Bugs in my area on Geocaching.com but I can't find the page now.

 

Does anyone know how to do this?

[+T.D.M.22]

The search is useless. It only shows where trackables are logged in, not where they really are.

 

This means that a cache goes missing and it has trackables in it, then it would appear that there's trackables in the cache, but there's not. Someone new doesn't understand how they work, and just takes one then same thing. Someone forgets to log it, same thing. It gets muggled, same thing. Someone logs it into the wrong cache, yup you guessed dot, same thing. In all these cases it would appear the trackable is in the cache, but it's not.

 

Then you have the opposites, someone forgets to log it into a cache, it won't show up. Someone doesn't know what they're doing, same thing. Someone drops it in the cache but mistakenly logs it into another cache, same thing.

 

And then there's the people who don't log in the field. They wait until they get home. So I take a trackable and before I log it, you see it's in the cache, but you get there and it's not. Or you skip over a cache because you don't see a trackable logged into it but I dropped one and just haven't logged it yet.

 

TLDR the only way to know is to find the cache.

[+cerberus1]

I won't say useless, but odds probably say the trackable isn't where it's listed.

Since Groundspeak started with bulk, and now has an "auto delete",, it might be a bit more accurate.

- Not sure though if it's truly "auto", or someone accesses it once-in-a-while.

 

I just go by the old search, looking along the info bar.

Supposedly can pq has trackables, but I don't pq to know for sure.

[tchaik]

And then there's the people who don't log in the field. They wait until they get home. So I take a trackable and before I log it, you see it's in the cache, but you get there and it's not. Or you skip over a cache because you don't see a trackable logged into it but I dropped one and just haven't logged it yet.

 

Absolutely right. I would just add, though, that it may also be that people *can't* log in the field. I like to do that whenever I can, but I live in an area of the UK where internet signals are notoriously poor/non-existent and it's often impossible I dropped off a TB yesterday and again had no signal, so raced about doing other caches and then driving to an area with signal, all to try and avoid exactly the situation you posted so clearly about - someone finds a TB, retrieves it and moves it on before I had a chance to log the fact that it was even there! I think even if we could log in the field and in real time all the time, it still wouldn't help when people have, say, done their homework and made their plans the night before, or even earlier the same day, or stored a cache offline for use where they know there's no signal. Maybe no "live action" hobby is perfect when technology is needed to track it?

 

Best wishes,

 

tchaik.