A Guide to Travel Bugs

Travel Bugs are special items in caches which are owned by a cacher who may not be the cacher who placed the cache... Their goal is to travel ... not to sit in caches

1. Travel Bugs DO NOT have to be traded. its OK to take a travel bug and not leave another travel bug or a cache item, but be consistent if you don’t trade when you take it out Don’t trade when you put it in.

2. You should ONLY take a travel bug if you can help it ... if there is a Travel Bug description sheet with it, read it and see if you can help, if you can, take it and help it along its way (many bugs have a laminated goal sheet attached to them)

3. If their is no travel Bug description/goal sheet, take the Bug (people would rather see the TB travel somewhere than not at all) and when you get home ask the owner if they want you to add the goal sheet to the bug (we normally stick the bug and the goal sheet in a food plastic bag) so others will know what its goals are... If you can place it in a cache that helps it do so. If not get it back out into the wild as soon as you can ... IMO adding the goal sheet helped the bug

4. Take pictures and e-mail them to the owners, bug owners like to see people caring for their bugs BUT PLEASE DO NOT show the tag number in pictures that is BAD.

5. Its OK to go back to a cache you have been to before if there is a bug in the cache that you can help. Just post a note on the cache not another found

6. Try to not hold onto a bug from more than 2 weeks ... in fact be aware that the web site will start reminding you have the bug after 2 weeks... If you can help a bug for instance BugX wants to go to America and you are going on vacation to USA in a months time, e-mail the owner and tell them you have the bug and will hold on to it for > 2 weeks but will be taking it with you on vacation ... meanwhile send Photos of bug having a good time

7. If you do a difficult or rarely visited cache, consider that this is not a good cache to place a bug in ... remember the bugs goal is to travel, sticking a bug in a cache that gets 2 visits a year is probably not a good idea.

8. Some caches are called Travel Bug Hotels/Motels usually the theme of these caches is for exchange of bugs, the cache owner usually does not want non bug items placed in the cache. but check the cache description. These motelsmay have rules that can turn them into TB prisons if you can help all the bugs with thier missions then help all the bugs in the motel not just one, remeber the cache owner does not own the TB’s in the cache as well !!

[Home] [Geocaching] [Resources] [Favorites] [History]