It shouldn’t come as a surprise that we have used cachetur.no to plan this promotion. But the way we ended up doing it surprised us a bit.
ℹ️ Note: if you want to follow along and do the same, you will have to do so on a computer/Mac. This won’t work on a phone/tablet.
Short about the promotion
This souvenir promotion is divided into different parts, and you will have to find caches in the correct order to complete it. The first part consists of finding caches containing various clues. To even get started, you will have to find a cache containing the Detective clue. After that you will be able to find three more clues, before you can find the last five clues. After all the clues have been found, you’ll have to find 35 additional caches to get the final souvenir.
⚠️ I highly recommend that you only find the caches you need, in the order you need them. This is the easiest way to ensure that you don’t “waste” any clues.
Preparations
The first we did was to decide on how we wanted to do this. We decided to start with the first two souvenirs (first 4 clues), and then the next souvenir the day after (the next 5 clues). So we created one trip for the first part, and one for the second. We will eventually create multiple trips to get the final 35 caches, but that’s just regular planning.
If you haven’t installed the Cachetur Assistant yet, you should do so: https://cachetur.no/makro/1
Locate the first cache
To find the first clue, we used the new map on geocaching.com. We activated the filter for Detective. I also recommend activating the filters Not Found and Not Owned.
ℹ️ You can also use this link to go straight to the map with the filter already set: https://www.geocaching.com/play/map?tr=1
Then the rest
You aren’t supposed to be able to see the next clues until after you’ve found the first, and the same for the last 5 clues. But there is a trick. By changing the number after &tr= in the address bar, you’ll get access to the remaining filters as well.
Links to all clues:
- Detective (you need 1)
- Footprint (you need 2)
- Shadow (you need 2)
- Fingerprint (you need 2)
- Sapphire (you need 3)
- Ruby (you need 3)
- Diamond (you need 3)
- Emerald (you need 3)
- Topaz (you need 3)
The order is important
Note that you will have to find Detective before you can find any other clue. After that, you can find Footprint, Shadow and Fingerprint in any order. After you’ve found all you need of those, you can continue and find the remaining clues in any order – but remember to find Footprint, Shadow and Fingerprint first!
Due to this, it made perfect sense for us to break this up into two trips. Especially since we only had a couple hours after work to spare anyway 😛
Cachetur.no can help
We started out trip as we usually do, by adding our home coordinates via the Saved places feature. After that, we found the first and best Detective candidate – which neither had DNF logs nor any other potential issues. This is important to remember for all caches you plan to find in this promotion.
After that, we continued with the next filter and repeated the process for all the clues needed for the second souvenir. Cachetur eventually started generating routes, and this allowed us to quickly see where we already were going to drive. This made it easier to identify the best candidates for the remaining clues.
⚠️Note: The Cachetur Assistant doesn’t fully support the new map. So the easiest way to get the caches sent to cachetur, is to open them in a new tab, and use “Send to cachetur.no” from there. Remember that you will also have to select the map type Geocaching.
ℹ️ We recommend that you also add a comment saying which clue that cache contains – you can do this via the Cachetur Assistant as well. This will allow you to keep control even in the event of a DNF.
Time to do some optimization
Since we had already decided to split this into two trips, it was easy to ensure that we didn’t find the clues in the wrong order – as long as we found Detective first. So the route optimization tool on cachetur.no worked perfect for these trips!
You’ll find the tool under Edit trip -> Sort/prioritize waypoints. Use the button Toggle marked to select all waypoints, or click Mark on the first, press shift and click Mark on the last. Scroll a bit further down, and click Calculate and sort by optimal route. Remember to save after cachetur has finished sorting the caches for you.
ℹ️ If you are doing this on the first part, you should optimize from the cache you need to find the Detective-clue and to your home/endpoint – this ensures that you get the Detective clue first, then the optimal route from there on.
Tiny adjustments to make it perfect
The automatic sorting will give you a near optimal route. I only did a couple adjustments to avoid having to cross the road unnecessary. So we ended up with caches on one side on the way in, and on the other on the way out.
Backups might be needed
We were a bit skeptical to a couple of the caches on the second trip, so we decided to add a couple in backup. A bit far away from the route, but worth it if you need it (which we actually did).
To avoid having the backups mess up the route, and the calculated time, we put them at the top of the trip. This allowed us to keep the route and time calculations correct.
We also excluded them from the route calculation, and added comments about which clues they contained.
Time to go caching!
To not be tempted to find caches we might need later (after all, we still need 35 caches after finding all the clues), we decided to only put the planned caches (including the backups) into your GPSr.
We also created a trip package with the Garmin driving route file. This made it very easy to navigate from cache to cache. And we used the cachetur app to keep track of our progress.
Good luck!
We hope more people can benefit from our experiences, and hopefully have fun while doing this promotion! Please tell us if this helped you or not 🙂
All the Jewels filter = tr=5%2C6%2C7%2C8%2C9