Traveling Caches, Why Are They Not Allowed?

[+TopShelfRob]

Actually, how would you even search for a "cache-looking" TB? Since it won't show up on it's own on the map, people aren't even going to know about it unless they actually come across it in another cache. Are they required to have a certain keyword in the title to distinguish them from other TBs?

 

Even if you put a log in it, I'm sure some people wouldn't bother to sign the log if they couldn't get a smiley. I don't think this idea would really replicate the experience of searching for an actual 'travelling' cache.

[+dprovan]

You can still create one, just attach a TB tag to a small lock'n'lock and add a logbook. The only difference is that the places it could end up are limited to existing caches, and discovery would not generate a smiley.

Yeah but it's not really the same, how do people discover them since they don't show up on the map? Cachers don't really seek out travel bugs like they do caches.

The traveling cache in the San Francisco area, g.S.F.R?T. Moving Cache, is not maintained, so you'd find the TB based "cache" the same way anyone finds that one: you just have to know about it and either visit from time to time or set up a watch on it to see where it goes next. And it's not as if maintained traveling caches are that much easier to locate just because they show up on the map.

 

In fact, now that 4wheelin_fool mentions it, a TB would be very close to a traveling cache. And I see no reason for them to be limited to existing caches: traveling caches have the coordinates posted in log entries, and it's just a convenience if a CO actually takes those coordinates and changes the cache location to them, so it's not so bad if there's no official coordinates posted at GC.com anywhere. (Although, actually, I've always wished that you could attach coordinates to TB logs like you can to other logs so that the travels can be tracked on the map even when the TB doesn't actually visit caches. But that's another issue.) Yeah, it makes it a little easier to get forgotten, but TBs get lost sometimes.

 

Yeah, you don't get a smiley, but I think people go after traveling caches for larger reasons than because their find count gets bumped by 1.

 

Now the question is has anyone actually released such a traveler?

[+TopShelfRob]

True, I only knew about 'Lewis & Clark' because I put it on a watchlist after just happening to come across it awhile back... I think I first saw it on a bookmark list of travelling caches. So it's not like I would have just happened to see it on the map the morning the co-ordinated were updated. Although it was the cache owner enabling it with the new co-ordinates that sent me the alert to my watchlist that it was enabled, not that I manually got the co-ordinates from the logs.

 

The fact there are so few of them is why I watched it and hoped I could grab it. It's got 342 Favorite Points and 106 people watching it so I'm not the only one. Most of the ones on the bookmark list seem to stay in a particular area. There are very few that can go anywhere.

 

But if someone did (or has) released a travelling TB cache, how would anyone know? And since anyone can release one because they aren't grandfathered, why would anyone care about it any more than any other TB? There would be nothing special about it. The specialness of the travelling caches is that the few of them that are left are still around 11 years after they couldn't be released anymore. If they were all over the place, I probably wouldn't have followed 'Lewis & Clark' and wanted to grab it as badly.

 

Without the uniqueness of them being not allowed anymore, people would just wait for them to show up near them on the map and then try to grab one, but it wouldn't be such a big deal.

 

Yeah, you don't get a smiley, but I think people go after traveling caches for larger reasons than because their find count gets bumped by 1.

 

But I think a 'travelling TB cache' would always be thought of as a TB that just happens to look like a cache itself. Unless it is searchable on the map or able to be put in a PQ to put in your GPS, it's still just going to be something that happens to be in a cache that will probably disappear.

Edited April 12, 2014 by TopShelfRob

[+ByronForestPreserve]

There's a traveling cache in the hands of someone a mere 32 miles from me. I only found it because I sorted local caches by favorite points, and that was at the top...hadn't even heard of 'em before. I dunno if I'll get my hands on it, though--I've seen FTFs in these parts within minutes of publish time; we have some really eager folks around here.