Traveling Vicariously

Geocoins vary in shapes and sizes

There's a 'side game' in geocaching that involves geocoins or travel tags with unique tracking numbers. The intent is for these items to travel from cache to cache with the aid of geocachers. In order for this to happen, the tags or coins need to be logged into and out of the geocaches where they transfer from one geocacher to another. We quickly learned that the fancier and more expensive geocoins 'disappear' almost immediately.

Travel tags are less expensive, not as fancy, and with some luck will continue traveling, although they too have a tendency to evaporate into thin air. Many geocachers will no longer risk launching a travel bug, but I enjoy seeing where they go.

With one of our geocaching friends headed for Belgium for a couple weeks, I decided to launch a travel tag that I've had sitting around for months. I attached it to the back of a wooden wheel just to give it a bit more size so that it was less likely to be lost in the bottom of a cache, but I cut part of the tire off so that it wouldn't roll.

I just got some pictures of where it was dropped off.

A beautiful, sandy beach with a very well known name if you know any history - Dunkirk.

with remnants of war remaining to be seen.

The shifting sands don't bode well for the line of sight for a gunner, but do provide opportunity for the placement of a geocache large enough to host my travel tag. One of these days, a geocacher will pick it up and move it to a different cache.

Meanwhile, I can travel vicariously.