[Az-Geocaching] Travel Bugs in NPS caches

[Jim Scotti]

   In an ideal world, the cache owner would recover the cache from the NPS.  
The NPS certainly seems to be very cooperative and even hopeful that that
would happen, but how many geocaches have essentially been abandoned by their
owner, either because they do not live in the area the cache was placed, or
have lost interest in the sport (and those owners might be considered a
little irresponsible)?  So retrieving it may not be easy (though it sounds
like the NPS is willing to mail the items - I bet most owners of removed
caches may not realize that is an option).  Allowing a travelbug to be
retrieved separately by the travelbugs owner seems quite reasonable,
especially if the NPS can ship it to them.  As a cacheowner, the thing I
would regret loosing most about a destroyed or lost cache (and this could
extend to one removed by the NPS or some other agency) is the loss of the
logbook.  Another problem with travelbugs is that they are often placed in
caches and not logged, so the travelbug owner may not even know that his
travelbug has been collected by the NPS.  Hopefully the cacheowners will
collect their geocaches and get any travelbugs in them back into circulation,
but I think there is only a 90 day period (or is it only 60 days?) that
abandoned property is held by the NPS before being disposed of.  If only we
could convince the NPS that geocaches are not actually abandoned property.  
I have either revisited or paid very close attention to the activity of all
my geocaches, so I wouldn't consider them abandoned.

Jim.

On Wed, 24 Apr 2002, Scott Wood wrote:

> At 05:18 PM 4/24/2002 -0700, you wrote:
> >By the sound of the post from the ranger that picked
> >up the cache, the whole cache is available to be
> >picked up by the owner of the cache.  Parhaps that's a
> >better way to go so that the cache can be relocated
> >somewhere else, travel bugs and all.
> 
> My concern is that a couple of the cache owners don't seem to be returning 
> e-mail.  I have e-mailed them to ask if they plan on placing the cache 
> elsewhere, but have still to get a response.
> 
> 
> 
> Scott
> Team My Blue Heaven
> www.myblueheaven.com/geocache
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Az-Geocaching mailing list
> listserv@azgeocaching.com
> http://listserv.azgeocaching.com/mailman/listinfo/az-geocaching
> 
> Arizona's Geocaching Resource
> http://www.azgeocaching.com
> 

Jim Scotti                              
Lunar & Planetary Laboratory         jscotti@pirl.lpl.arizona.edu 
University of Arizona                
Tucson, AZ 85721 USA                 http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~jscotti/