Beep Beep! A Tale of Two Jeeps For four years (2004-2007), Jeep Chrysler ran a promotional campaign involving geocaching and photography. During the months of the contest, which usually ran for half the year, the company released small model Jeeps attached to special travel bug tags. If you found one of the Jeep bugs, you could use it to enter the contest by taking a picture with the Jeep involving that month's theme. Typically, the monthly winners won a free GPS unit, and the overall winner won a brand new Jeep of the model featured in the contest.
They decided not to do the contest anymore, which is slightly disappointing to me, because I was always watching for those Jeeps, taking pics, and trying to win the contest. However, the Jeep Tbs are still in circulation. The most numerous are the 2007 Red Jeeps, then the Green Jeeps from 2006, and more rare are the Yellow Jeeps from 2004 and the most elusive of all are the White Jeeps from 2005, a larger die cast model of the Rubicon. (For accuracy sake, I just checked the site again, and saw there are actually 93 Yellow and 96 White Jeeps left out in circulation, and I have less Yellows than Whites on my profile, but anyways...)
I have seen White Jeeps at events, but I have never seen one in a cache. I like to joke that
they are "only found in captivity, never in the wild". Sometimes they are listed in one, but they are never to be found in one. There is a lot of disgruntled cachers out there who complain that some cachers are "Jeep hoarders" or "collectors", and hold on to them and simply take them from event to event, or never share them at all. Each of the Jeeps has it's own icon when logged, so they are more akin to geocoins than other travel bugs.
Well, at our annual White Elephant Gift Exchange event, the gift I ended up with was a wooden box filled with supplies to h
ide a new cache, and one of these rare White Jeeps. Each of these Jeeps were given names that year, and this one is called "Reynold". I was super excited. We looked online to see how many White Jeeps were actually in circulation still and the answer is only 96 of them. (For comparison, there were I think 4500 Green Jeeps and 5700 Red Jeeps released each of those years). I decided I wanted to hang on to this one just a little bit to enjoy it thoroughly, take some pictures, and show it off to other cachers at events.
Then, this week, something very odd happened. I found one in the wild! It was a total surprise. It was not logged into the cache, because the cacher had accidentally done the virtual drop into a different cache. I was out caching with one of my friends and our kids, and when she said "There's a White Jeep in it!" as she opened the cache, I was hoping she would let me hang on to it, and she did.
So now I have two, two White Jeeps! It is like the Holy Grail of geocaching travelers doubled! I think it is really neat. I've been scouting for photo ops and events to take them to for show, and thinking about where, in the end, I might finally leave them...
They decided not to do the contest anymore, which is slightly disappointing to me, because I was always watching for those Jeeps, taking pics, and trying to win the contest. However, the Jeep Tbs are still in circulation. The most numerous are the 2007 Red Jeeps, then the Green Jeeps from 2006, and more rare are the Yellow Jeeps from 2004 and the most elusive of all are the White Jeeps from 2005, a larger die cast model of the Rubicon. (For accuracy sake, I just checked the site again, and saw there are actually 93 Yellow and 96 White Jeeps left out in circulation, and I have less Yellows than Whites on my profile, but anyways...)
I have seen White Jeeps at events, but I have never seen one in a cache. I like to joke that
they are "only found in captivity, never in the wild". Sometimes they are listed in one, but they are never to be found in one. There is a lot of disgruntled cachers out there who complain that some cachers are "Jeep hoarders" or "collectors", and hold on to them and simply take them from event to event, or never share them at all. Each of the Jeeps has it's own icon when logged, so they are more akin to geocoins than other travel bugs.Well, at our annual White Elephant Gift Exchange event, the gift I ended up with was a wooden box filled with supplies to h
ide a new cache, and one of these rare White Jeeps. Each of these Jeeps were given names that year, and this one is called "Reynold". I was super excited. We looked online to see how many White Jeeps were actually in circulation still and the answer is only 96 of them. (For comparison, there were I think 4500 Green Jeeps and 5700 Red Jeeps released each of those years). I decided I wanted to hang on to this one just a little bit to enjoy it thoroughly, take some pictures, and show it off to other cachers at events.Then, this week, something very odd happened. I found one in the wild! It was a total surprise. It was not logged into the cache, because the cacher had accidentally done the virtual drop into a different cache. I was out caching with one of my friends and our kids, and when she said "There's a White Jeep in it!" as she opened the cache, I was hoping she would let me hang on to it, and she did.
So now I have two, two White Jeeps! It is like the Holy Grail of geocaching travelers doubled! I think it is really neat. I've been scouting for photo ops and events to take them to for show, and thinking about where, in the end, I might finally leave them...
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