Ryan's Arrival Travel Bug

I recently celebrated a birthday. One of my gifts was travel bug tags. I'm new to this TB stuff so I decided to hold the tag until getting to the US to launch it. With the birth of my third grandson I decided to release one in his honor. I found a photo keychain and placed a photo of Ryan in it. This cache is my way of giving thanks to the Lord for the birth of Ryan Ethan Abbott on 21 June 2010 at the High Point Regional Hospital. Ryan's Arrival (TB33FDM) was released in cache RDU Travel Bug Hotel (GCB649) near the Raleigh-Durham airport in North Carolina with instructions that it should travel to Quito, Ecuador. We are spending a month in North Carolina and then we will return to Quito where I'll be waiting the arrival of the travel bug. I wonder how long it will take for this to get there?

Unique Caches, part 2

Any avid cacher will discover unique caches along the way.  Sometimes I stand back and marvel at the mind of the person who puts these together.  I really like a cache that breaks the mold and gives you a challenge and a surprise at the same time.  Following along a theme I started last month I'm posting photos and the story of two more unique caches I have found.

1) The Hanging Cache - I found this one during the summer in Greensboro, NC.  I won't give the name or information or else this could be a spoiler.  I was on my son-in-law's mountain bike trying to pick up a few caches on a hot July morning.  I got off the trail and tracked into the woods a ways to where I could leave the bike unseen.  From there I tracked through the woods several hundred feet.  The tree canopy was such that my Garmin Etrex was not getting a good signal.  I came into a small clearing and could see some houses through the woods in the distance, too far for anyone there to be able to easily see me.  My GPSr was getting an accuracy of 60 feet, which is not the best considering that out in the open I was getting 9 ft accuracy.  When this happens I start tracking in to the GZ from different directions in order to find where the tracks intersect.  I did this several times while looking for the cache.  I was checking out every tree stump, the base of every tree with grass around it, holes in the ground, you name it.  Nothing was turning up until I almost walked into it.  There it was hanging from a high tree limb, suspended by fishing line.  It was right at eye level in a green container.  It blended in with the woods in such a way that your eyes don't focus in on it.  While signing the log I saw in the distance a doe come down through the woods.  I had several deer sightings in these woods in July.  Finding this cache was a lot of fun.

2) The bug cache - While in Greensboro, NC for vacation I found another cache that had been a challenge for several people.  I guess I was just fortunate.  Like in the previous case I rode the mountain bike and hid it in the woods off the trail.  I tracked to the GZ and had a lot of bounce on my signal.  After looking around the ground I looked up and saw this one on a tree.  It was a fake caterpillar with a very small clear bison tube attached to it.  The tube was stuck into the tree so that only the caterpillar was visible if you were looking closely.