SpiderWings

The new mission as a VIRTUAL travel bug was a trip around the world by Mr. & Mrs SpiderTracks, exploring virtual geography and surveying geocache locales along the way. The trip is NOW COMPLETE. We arrived home at 1:08pm on July 4th 2006!!! Check the report here.

Originally this was Track 74 Travel Log Bug which actually got off to a good start, being moved by 7 teams and visiting 5 caches before being found by a GeoNewbie that apparently had little stamina for the sport, and who visited just one cache, grabbed just one travel bug, then seemed to lose all interest - without moving the bug along. You can click Trk74map below to see its movements to that point.

So, with Mr. SpiderTracks' love of flying (virtually on his flight simulator), this bug accompanied our team on an around the world journey of virtual flights. We had many adventures and took virtual pictures of interesting places along the way... some in the very same spots where geocaches are located in the real world. For those, we made Note Logs, dropping SpiderWings in and out, and posting simulator screen shots of the area. We tried to find at least one cache in every country, commonwealth, territory, province and US state using a random selection method so their locations would provide adventures of exploration, often away from the most effecient route.
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A virtual travel bug was a bit different to grab. But many cache owners, and other interested people along the way, emailed us for the number so they could "take a jont" aboard the current plane.

BELOW, you will see a MAP of our jouneys; followed by a collection of FLAGS in the order (left to right and down) of the places we visited (sometimes we had to revisit an area to get to a new one); several graphics showing the VARIOUS AIRCRAFT forms SpiderWings has taken; and a standard CACHES FOUND MAP showing most of the caches we virtually visited and some STATISTICS about the trip.
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NOTE: As of April 2006, it is no longer possible to log this bug as a find, or in and out of caches. Admittedly its virtual nature is a bit unconventional for the travel bug system, so it has become locked. But for now at least the page can still be viewed.

The last cache logged is near Las Vegas, just 386 miles short of home after nearly two years and between 196,091.3 and 327,000 miles depending on how we reckon our accumulated miles.

Although the last cache logged was in Nevada, we have flown back to the northern border of Utah via, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming where we did still looked for and found cache locations. We are probably going to finish up the trip by finding at least one cache in each Utah county with Uintah (our home) being the last. We'll not be able to log SpiderWings in and out of the caches but will still post notes and screen shots of our visit to the cache page.

The dates of the trip have been virtually behind the real calendar as it often takes longer in virtual time to fly, take and label screen shots, etc. We virtually arrived back in Utah (Dutch John in Dagget Co) on July 19th 2005 which was done in real time on April 11, 2006. The rest of the trip (through Utah) will use more current dates so the logs aren't buried down in last year's stuff.

As we've not been able to get out geocaching too much lately, this project has been a great pasttime - mostly for Mr. SpiderTracks who did most of the flying, all of the logs and picture taking, and has enjoyed learning a lot of things about graphics, airplanes, airports, air traffic control procedures, exchanging email with many other flight enthusiasts (real and simulated), and geography. While the sim usually doesn't do justice to most cities and towns, we believe that it does capture the shapes and character of the landscape very well. Once back in the western USA, Mr. SpiderTracks was often able to find our way by recognizing places on the ground from our real life travels down there.

Thanks to everyone that we buzzed along the way, for putting up with, and often embracing, our virtually crazy idea.

"Salt Lake Center... is type Skylane... requesting VFR clearence to here and there in Utah ... Sierra papa delta romeo."

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