Monday 27 August 2012

What are 'Travel Bugs'?

The definition of a travelbug described by Groundspeak is below.

What is a Groundspeak Travel Bug?
Simply put, a Groundspeak Travel Bug is a trackable tag that you attach to an item. This allows you to track your item on Geocaching.com. The item becomes a hitchhiker that is carried from cache to cache (or person to person) in the real world and you can follow its progress online.

What does a Travel Bug do?
It’s up to the owner of the Bug to give it whatever task they desire. Or no task at all. Part of the fun in owning a Travel Bug is inventing new goals for the Bug to achieve. A Bug’s goal may be to reach a specific country, travel to 10 countries, or simply to see the world.

How do Travel Bugs work?
Each Travel Bug has its own unique tracking number stamped on it. This tracking number is used to prove that one found the item and allows finders to locate the personal web page for the travel bug.
Travel Bugs are tracked with the help of users who go online and “grab” them from caches, or receive them from users. The idea is by picking up and dropping off Travel Bugs on the web site you are mirroring the Bug’s real world adventures. Each Travel Bug has its own “diary” that follows its movements.





Personally I love travel bugs and trackables, though trackables are constantly going missing. Either they are stolen, taken but not logged online, or kept by another geocacher and forgotten about, or lost in some other way.

I had a trackable, 'Teddy Bear's Picnic', which only went in one cache before going missing. It is really disappointing when they disappear, but there is always a hope that they will re-surface.

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