Travel Bugs

For those who read the title above and thought, "travel what?" a Travel Bug is an item attached to a dog tag...usually found in a caching box on a hidden trail in the brush somewhere with a bar code of some kind including special information to determine it's prime target location or destination. :)

To put it to you simply, it's called Geo Caching...and it's quite addicting.

Last month, Billy and I flew out to California for a wonderful post-wedding reception his parents threw for us. While we were there, we had a few days of free time in which we were told we would be "Geo Caching". I was confused a bit, as I had never heard of the term, but once given the explanation, I recalled a certain episode in Amazing Race where the teams in competition had to do this sort of "high tech treasure hunt". Geo Cachers take their hand-held gps devices, plug in certain coordinates to a "treasure box" and then drive to their "treasure hunt". The caches can be found by simply clicking on http://www.geocaching.com/ and entering your zip code, or city...we found that there are THOUSANDS of these little hidden containers all over our city! All you need is a handheld gps unit and you're good to go!

So we made a decision. We are going to try making this a regular hobby (and a new fitness regime). It's so fun to meet the challenge of finding the hidden cache, plus it can really be great excercise! You can decide how rough the terrain, or how difficult the hunt. Here are a few simple suggestions: #1 Wear clothes/shoes you don't mind getting dirty. #2 Take a pen, because if you find the cache, you should write your name and the date you found it on the log book. #3 If you take an item from the box, you should leave an item as well. For instance, in the Cali cache, we took a Travel Bug toy monster truck with a dog tag asking us to take it closer to a "Monster Truck Rally" and we left in return, a bottle of bubbles from our wedding (to sort of celebrate the purpose of our trip) :)

Today, we Geo Cached on a hiking trail nearby, and it took us a while to find the box, as it was hidden under several large pieces of bark. We left the monster truck there (our city is well known for their rally's), and took a new travel bug for Unite for Diabetes (not all caches have travel bugs, so you have to search them out online as each cache should tell it's contents).

We haven't decided where we might leave the new "find" but I'm sure the next hunt will be just as fun and maybe even more challenging!

Beware if you try it for yourself. You just might get hooked like we are.