On an April day in 2008. I believe the sun was shining and the air smelled of honeysuckle. My then 11 year old daughter looked at me with her crystal blue eyes and said, "Daddy, Wolfgang Von PitterPat is going to be okay, right?"
I smiled at my child and said, "Why sure darling, this little travel bug will see the world and go places you might want to visit some day. It will be just fine."
So we took little Wolfgang (a Chinstrap Penguin) to it's first drop off point which was one of my nearby geocaches and it disappeared into the wild.
Little did I know then of the life expectancies of a Travel Bug or Geocoin in the geocaching world. For many, the fates cause them to be lost, stolen, destroyed and just plain misplaced for years at a time. I know of several geocachers who have put out hundreds of travel bugs only to have just a few still in circulation. Then there are the others who chug along happily as they get picked up from one geocache and dropped back into another as they attempt to reach some goal. As far as Wolfgang goes he is on one crazy ride to Antarctica where he wants to meet up with some of his real time buddies.
Until recently Wolfgang has stayed in the United States traveling from one coast to the next. He made it big when his travels included being with the Subaru Leave No Trace gang for a month or two and was given a whole new set of bling.
They took him all over the place on the west coast and even wrote a couple of articles about him in their newsletters.
You can check them out here.
Now after 10510+ miles Wolfgang Von PitterPat finds himself in the United Kingdom. Who knows what adventures await him overseas? What I can tell you is every time I give my now 14 year old daughter updates about it. Her eyes sparkle just a little more blue than usual. Sure bad things can happen to these travelers but the fun of watching them go over the years is worth the risk.
GeoCache: I'm NOT Obsessed... Right?
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