Student Travel Zone

You’ve just got back from your family vacation.  The tent is packed away and all the sleeping bags are rolled up.  Yet you still feel the pull of the outdoors and can’t stop thinking about.  Now is the time to plan your next geocache adventure. 

If you’re not familiar with geocaching it is a global treasure hunt using a GPS system.  The object of the game is to get the coordinates of boxes from the main geocahing website and then plug them into your GPS and try to find them.  There are over 600,000 geocache boxes world wide. 

A favorite component of geocaching is the use of the travel bug.  This is an item that has a dog tag with a serial number attached to it.  The serial number provides a tracking mechanism to follow the item wherever it may be through the central website. 

Below is our list of travel bug games:

1. Follow The Bug – This is the most basic travel bug game where you simply unleash your travel bug into the world and see where it may go.  One of the great things about the geocaching.com website is that people can also post pictures so you can see where you travel bug has been and who they’ve been hanging out with.
2. Pick A Spot – Also referred to as “going to grandmas”.  This is where the travel bug is assigned a destination to reach.  It could be a family member’s geocache or place of distinction such as a picture in front of a historic landmark.  The travel bug is given a mission and then through the magic of geocaching gets moved from cache to cache until it reaches its destination.  It may take awhile, but it makes you believe in the goodness of humanity when you see your travel bug finally make it.
3. The Big Race – A derivative of pick a spot is the big race.  In this game several travel bugs get launched to see who can make it to a destination first.
4. Score Points – In this game several travel bugs compete by trying to score points by accomplishing different tasks.  For example, a travel bug could score a point for each different state it lands in.  The bugs have a final date and the bug with the most points by a certain date wins.  You just have to use your imagination on what could count as a point.  It could be number of caches visited, number of countries or something as grand as how many oceans a travel bug crosses. 
5. Corporate Sponsorship – The folks at groundspeak also allow companies to participate.  In 2007 Jeep sponsored a Jeep style travel bug that could be found and the winner of their contest won a brand new Jeep. 

These are just a few of the common games played with travel bugs.  The sky is the limit if you just use your imagination.

Tags: camping tents | camping tents | sleeping bags | sleeping bags | family tents | family tents | tents | tents | tent | tent

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 31st, 2008 at 3:22 pm and is filed under Outdoors recreation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.