Metal-Protection Silver Antiqued Flat Flower TB

I maintain records on my trackables. They have the goal to circulate more than five years and to be moved by at least 25 cachers. That is a target rate of five drops per year for five years, or a drop every 73 days. The average drop rate of my trackables in the US is 124 days, in Europe it is 71 days. As of 1-Nov-23 this trackable had survived for 6.2 years but it had been moved by only 14 cachers, for an average drop every 162 days, or 2.3 drops per year. Please keep it moving, then drop it in a safe place!

No permission is needed to leave the U.S. While in the U.S., please drop it at an event, in a Premium Member only OR a rural cache near a busy trail or road. Do not place it in an urban, non-premium cache. Transport the bug in the original plastic bag for as long as the bag lasts; the bag keeps the trackable clean and dry, protects the number and prevents tangling with other items. Otherwise, take the trackable anywhere you wish.

While I have lived in Texas for nearly 50 years, I was born and grew to an adult in Kansas.  When I tell someone of my origins, they almost always respond in one of two ways:  “I have been there but I don’t remember much about it” or “that 400 mile drive across the state on Interstate 70 is really boring.”  There is more to the state than that.  The wheat grown there feeds the world, and the people are nice.  I watch for items I can convert to travel bugs.  Each one in this metal series  was named for a Kansas town having an interesting name or history.

Protection is in Commanche County, in the south-central part of the state, near the border with Oklahoma.  It was founded in 1884 and named for the popular support of a protective tariff that was an issue in the presidential election of the same year. More than that, the town became nationally and internationally known via radio and television campaign in 1955–1956, when the National Polio Foundation chose it as the center for the free distribution of Salk vaccine shots for polio. Thus, Protection became 100 percent protected.