The Story of the Ohio State Buckeye Ball Travelbug

Was at the Geocaching with Kids Workshop yesterday and was reminded of the Ohio State Buckeye Ball. Followers of the original Trailmix.Net Blog might remember the story, but for those that don’t it goes like this…..

Back in May of 2007 our family was new to geocaching and we stumbled upon our first travelbug. The Ohio State Buckeye Ball was visiting Sacramento and ended up in the hands of our 4 year old, even then a geocaching zealot. The Buckeye Ball was traveling from cache to cache on a mission to visit golf courses in North America and as fate would have it, we had a trip to Monterey planned later that month.

Monterey, for those that aren’t Californians or golfers, is adjacent to some fairly decent courses. Since we haven’t golfed since college and try to avoid burning hundreds of dollars on sports that don’t involve mountains or snow, the 17 mile golf course loop is a part of California that we hadn’t really been inclined to explore… but for Geocaching, we were willing to make an exception.

The trip turned out to become one of our fondest Geocaching memories. We visited Pebble Beach, Cypress Point, Spyglass, Poppy Hills and more. Most importantly, we learned that helping a travelbug along could open doors to family adventures by taking us off the beaten path – or in our case onto a path that we never would have taken.

The photos below are from that trip. To track the complete travels of the Ohio State Buckeye Ball Travelbug, cache hopping since 2006, click here.

The Photos: