Rescue Mission

I'm on a mission! I wish it was a caching run lasting all day but its not. I'm on a rescue mission to save some languishing Travel Bugs and Geocoins. Some of you may be asking what is a TB. Its a small twist on the sport of geocaching. You can purchase a small trackable "dog tag" and attach it to an item you wish to send on a mission. That item can be anything from a stuffed animal or a medallion or, and this was kind of strange, a glob of something or other that was designed to teach people what fat looks like. You drop your TB in a cache, go to the website and indicate it is released and watch it travel from cache to cache around the world. Of course, you indicate where you would like it to go. Some folks take pictures of it along the way and post them to the TB page on www.geocaching.com. Geocoins are coins with a tracking code and they do the same things.

Anyway, listening to Podcacher (weekly iTunes downloadable podcast about geocaching) or reading posts in the different geocaching forums, I’ve heard of Travel Bugs and Geocoins that get stuck in a geocaches and don’t move along. Here in Ecuador with geocaching depending mostly on the tourist that come and go this can be a real problem. We've got some that have been camping out in the woods for months now.

Today I had a particularly stressful day and need some time out in the woods. I took off with a goal of recovering four or five languishing TBs scattered across the Metropolitan Park above Quito. First to Karen's Caper TB Hotel (GC182AC) (Yep, I'm a proud grandfather bragging on my granddaughter's first geocache) where one of wizzzzard's TBs was waiting for a ride to another cache. I also grabbed a Snoppy TB and will move him along too. Karen's Caper TB Hotel required a little stealth as the park entrance and guard tower is not far away. Finding it and recovering the TB was easy. Now off to Cobblestone Corner (GC17DTR) to find another languishing bug owned by wizzzzard. This is one of my caches and it is one of my favorites. It is well hidden and yet easy for the geocacher who reads the description. Now to the big hike. My office work and the errands that took me all over the city of Quito today kept me from getting my exercise this morning. No problem! Getting to Reforestation (GC168M3) to recover another TB is a long and beautiful walk. Off I went. In the whole hike this afternoon I only came across two mountain bikers. I had the woods to myself. The walk was great but the discovery that the languishing TB was no longer languishing but missing, maybe even abducted, was a little saddening. I was looking for the TB known as Add it on II. It's not there. I hope that who ever took it will get on www.geocaching.com and indicate they have it. Even more I hope that they'll drop it in another cache.

So, I have rescued three travelers and will move them along. I have a trip out of Ecuador and to the US this weekend and hope to drop them in Georgia or Connecticut. I hope to drop some of them in the TUC series of caches in the West Hartford Reservoir just west of Hartford, Connecticut!

A closing note. Thanks to several who've made comments on this blog. Please forgive the lateness in responding. It has to do with my inexperience with how to manage the comments.