From the “never give up hope” archives, comes the story of the Purple Passion Mobile, long lost travel bug.

The Race Begins

Back in March 2009, the 3 of us visited Florida for a vacation. Capt Biggins & Montu Rider hosted a geocaching event for us, and we decided to kick off a travel bug race with 3 little cars – one for each of us. The cars each went home with a different cacher, and they all had the goal of getting back to San Diego while accumulating points for visiting caches and getting pictures taken.

The Lean Green Machine

Sonny’s car, the Lean Green Machine traveled 2800 miles and made it home the next year in July 2010.

The Bold Gold Speedster

Sean’s car, the Bold Gold Speedster hopped straight from Florida to California and got close to us before it was hijacked off to another state and then traveled over 51,000 miles! It visited many countries in Europe, Africa, Australia, Thailand, Canada and even went on an Alaskan cruise!

Sadly, it was marked missing in July 2014 from a cache in Ohio.

The Purple Passion Mobile

Sandy’s car, the Purple Passion Mobile, traveled 3100 miles around the middle of the United States – never getting farther west than Nebraska – and went silent in February 2011.

4 ½ years later (October 2015), out of the blue, we got notice of a log. The Purple Passion Mobile was dropped off in a cache by the same geocacher who picked it up in 2011. The long lost travel bug was alive and well!! So, never give up on a travel bug. You never know when it will show up again!

Back story of the missing years

From jungleboy213. "Well, I'll tell you my story. I cached with influencewaterfowlcalls for a few years. We cached hard and we cached often. But, it got to a point where there weren't any more caches locally and the price of gas was through the roof. I decided to slow down a little. Then, in 2008, my son started racing ATV's. It is time consuming and money consuming. Geocaching was always in the back of my mind, but I just didn't have the time. I had your TB along with a few others. I always said to myself, "I need to get those TB's in caches" but I never did.

After 3 broken arms and 1 broken kneecap, my son decided that it would be in his best interest to stop racing and pursue other adventures. That gave me time to get back out and start caching again. I'm not as hard core cacher as I used to be, but I still love it. Being from PA and living in KY, being in the woods kind of reminds me of home.  I love this sport but after a 6 year layoff, my technology is a little old. I have already asked my wife for a Garmin Colorado for Christmas. I want to apologize for taking so long to get your TB back out in the field. But, I know it brought you guys a little joy to see it pop up again on your radar."

Final Update

The Purple Passion Mobile traveled for two more years (until August 2017) and then went missing again. But we have learned to never give up hope on a long lost travel bug!

Do YOU have a story of a long lost travel bug that was found? We'd love to hear about it!