Between February and March in 2011, i set off 8 travel bugs in a race around the world, for my children to monitor and check their progress. Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs were all set off to discover new places and for Geocaching members around the world to enjoy and move on. As the years passed by , one would go missing, not found in a cache, perhaps left in someone's draw at home, washed away from caches that were placed near rivers, all sorts of stories i could tell. After a few years of travelling, i changed their ''Current Goal'' to return home to a cache we had set near our home, so my children could take the travel bugs into school, and share the wonderful photos with their class and share how geocaching worked, hoping they would make their way home. But one by one they started to become inactive and eventually we were left with just three 'Live' travel bugs. Happy, Sleepy and Grumpy. On several occasions, one of them would make it back into the UK, only for another geocacher to whip them off on another fantastic journey across the world, and alas not making it home.
Sleepy, who was the most travelled one of the group, had amassed over 189,000 miles around the planet. He was discovered in October 2020, at a cache in Netherlands, by geocaching member green4you , who decided they would help with getting him home.
Well Sleepy has now arrived back home to the same place he was released almost 10 years ago (9 years 9 months). And fortunately in that time, my youngest at the time who was 5 years old, is still at school and now 15 years old and quite a bit bigger than when sleepy was released, will be sharing the news with his school and scout troop. My other two children are now adults, so unfortunately wont be sharing but will probably quite surprised when they see sleepy again.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank green4you for sending this travel bug back home,
it was a very kind act, and if anyone from this site reads this, surely there must be a badge for your account to reward you for this kind action.
Once sleepy has made his appearance at school and the cub/scout troop with all the photos of where he has been around the world in the last decade, he will once again continue to travel the globe and meet more geocachers.
Thank you once again to green4you, and happy caching to all around the world.
Stay safe...keep Geocaching.
OHL