Last week one of my Travel bugs (Scout Bear) celebrated its third birthday.Its birthday is the day I started him on his geocaching adventure.

A travel bug is a geocaching item that has been given a unique code that is trackable using the geocaching.com website. Generally the travel bugs are small items that have a small tag attached to them. Scout Bear is different. It is one of the Post Office Bears in a Scout Uniform.

He started close to home near Auburn Hills, Michigan and has traveled over 10,000 miles. He has met many scouts along the way including Cub Scout Pack 25 from Princeton, Massachusetts and the GPS Scouts who took it on the MidState Trail while they were getting ready for Philmont. (Interesting note: I will be going to Philmont this summer as well) He has traveled to 11 different states and Mexico during the three short years he’s been on the trail.

This could be done as a sort of modern Flat Stanley type activity with a class and their own travel bug. The only difficulty is the random travel of the travel bug. Travel bugs have been known to disappear (someone finds them and doesn’t log them into the site or just keeps them) or they end up lost.