Geocaching.com adds “visit” for dipping bugs

This article was originally published on Cache Up NB. It has been mirrored here for archive purposes only.

If anyone has been on the official geocaching.com homepage in the last few days, you probably noticed that the site was scheduled to be down yesterday afternoon. As part of their monthly patch/upgrade cycle, Groundspeak had some new features and bug fixes added to the site yesterday. The biggest news, and long overdue, is that they have now added the ability to “dip” travel bugs into caches without having to go through the previously long and annoying process of logging them in and out of a cache.

Many folks have trackable items that they keep. Whether it’s a hiking stick, a special geocoin, or dog tags/window clings/magnetic stickers on their vehicle, folks bring those trackables with them to events and to caches. In order to log that bug into a cache but keep it in your inventory, you used to have to “drop” the bug into the cache when you did your log, and then retrieve it again by using the 6 character code on the bug. This was a 2 step process and somewhat annoying when all you really wanted to do was to say that the trackable visited a cache/event to rack up mileage.

Yesterday, I read in the release notes for the changes that this has now been made FAR easier. I tried it out this morning and here’s how it works.

You need to have the bug/trackable in your Trackables inventory so if you have it in your “collection” you need to move it to your inventory. Only trackables in your inventory can be dropped into a cache.

Now, when you go to log a cache or event, you’re used to seeing the scrollable list at the bottom with all of the trackables. Normally you’d select the bugs you want to drop and then submit the log. Now each bug/trackable has a “Action” drop down. From action you can choose “drop” (leaving a trackable in a cache) or “visit”. The visit option “dips” the trackable and a new log is shown that the trackable has “visited” that cache. Any mileage associated with the visit is recorded but the bug stays in your inventory so you don’t have to log it out of the cache.

I definitely like this new option as the idea of having to log bugs in and out of caches previously was somewhat annoying but now that we can do it in one easy action, I imagine my caching mobile will see more mileage now than ever. Try it out and see how it works for you.

Do you have a trackable that you log in and out of events?