Red Jeep

I was a little surprised to spot a red Jeep travel bug in a cache recently. I thought all the Jeep travel bugs were in private collections by now.

This travel bug was actually well traveled for being one of the disappearing Jeeps. This one has logged over 14,000 miles and shows the miles in the scratched and missing paint. At one time the annual release of the Jeep series was one of the highlights of the geocaching year. We started in 2004 after the release of the yellow Jeeps which were the first annual series. Over the years seven of them passed through our hands.

For 2005 the colors switched to a larger white Jeep and my favorite of the series. Twenty white Jeep tb's passed through our hands including one we used in images to photoshop the geodogs riding in it.

The large white Jeeps were my favorites of the series. With the overwhelming number of micro and small caches placed now, the white Jeeps would fit in very few caches.

The green Jeeps were also a nice travel bug. They were available commercially as well so there were a few knock-offs created including our Stoney Man Mountain travel bug.

The red Jeeps were by far the least favorite of the series. While the first three were the highly popular and traditional Jeeps, the red one was a model of a Jeep that wasn't overly successful in its real form. The series ran its course and came to what appears to be a permanent end with the sale of Chrysler to Fiat after bankruptcy in the downturn. Too bad, the new Renegade would make an interesting model for a return of the series.

The Jeep trackables were a different time for geocaching. Now it seems many traval bugs and coins are gone within the first caches they visit while most promotional trackables never see the inside of a container (not that they would fit in a micro).