Fumble After Daylight 2017

In Out caching
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FAD is a annual tradition for us. And this year we traveled to Sweden a day earlier than we usually do, so we would have a bit more time to find caches. With us this year, was EiFlei and anirt.

Approximate time on road/out caching: 39 timer (flight time not included)
Total kilometers driven: 262 km / 162.8 mi
Total caches found: 80 (+1 extra for Heltinnen)
Total DNF: 4
Weather: Sunny, light rain, overcast
Highest temperature: 11°C / 52°F
Lowest temperature: 2°C / 35°F
Roadwork: Yes

Film

We’ve made a short film from this trip. It summarizes the trip very nicely. Note: this film contains spoilers.

Trip report

Are you curious about which caches we found?

The trip was planned on cachetur.no, of course. And there you will find our trip report.

Almost straight to the hotel

We took the first flight to OSL after work on Thursday. We met EiFlei and anirt on the other side of the mountains. From there, we continued on the same flight to Arlanda. The flight was so quick that we almost wondered if they had landed at the wrong airport.

The first and probably biggest surprise of the trip was when we picked up the rental car. Not only did they give us a new car, but it was also a lot better than what we had initially booked.

The trip north towards Uppsala wasn’t long, and neither did we stop very much. Two stops at Arlanda, one rest area and a couple caches near the hotel.

Do you have bacon?

For some reason, it was very important for some of us to know if they had bacon for breakfast or not. And we needed to know that when checking at 1am. The nice lady at the front desk calmed us, and told us that they indeed had bacon. All we needed to know! 😀 We also learnt that the hotel wasn’t older than three weeks! :O

Fun and large caches

We had planned to use the Friday to find large caches, old caches and caches with many favorite points. None of us have ever found caches in Uppsala before, so we had a lot to find. We decided to prioritize the caches we know we like.

And it worked, we had lots of fun! Lots of great caches, and a few bonus caches along the way. We have to mention a few, like GC47ZKJ Dirty Dancing and GC76HDK Vernissage. The latter had us use our exceptional drawing skills. Or something like that. At least we had fun!

GC3B4XQ The Tower was also a great cache. Nice size, and interesting location. It really impressed us. We found a few more bonus caches from there, before we continued towards GC5RVDW No tools #1 and the rest of the caches in that series. We really had to work to get to the logs, but it was worth it! And also really fun!

We visited a very old cache, GC3BF8 UA#1, and then GC5716E Danger. We found a larger version of Danger on our way to Oregon in August, and this one was just as fun 😀

The first event

We had to take a short break in the plan, to attend GC7CG4C PRE FAD – EAT, MEET AND GREET. A strange event to have before a large mega event. For us, the majority of the event took place outside the event location. We met lots of nice Norwegians, so we really don’t have anything to complain about. The log was funny, so we made sure to sign before leaving.

Just a few more

After the event, we continued on our list. We spent a half eternity looking for GC32124 XMAS2011U – 4:e, and it was worth it! We also visited GC4QWNN Loggbok, which has to be the best cache we found on this trip. Don’t think we’ve ever seen a Logbock, or First to fail before 😀

We ended the day with a few bonus caches around the hotel.

Early next morning

We got up relatively early, so we would have time for breakfast well before event start. The day almost started with a catastrophe, no bacon! Luckily, they had more in the kitchen.

Since we arrived early, we found a nice place to park and had time to find a few caches. GC2JMWP Vår Favorit was a great start on a long caching day.

The first in line

We know very well how long lines get at the entrance of a mega event. So we stayed close to the entrance around the announced starting time. And there was a long line behind us…

The event area felt very small, but that was mainly because half the venue was hidden by a large wall. A bit unusual for FAD. Lots of caching stash we could purchase, which we think is a very important part of a mega event. And we did some shopping, of course.

Too much we wanted to do

We had way too much we wanted to do, both cachetur.no lecture, GIFF and earthcache lecture. Too bad we didn’t have enough time to get between them. But we enjoyed as much as we could of all of them.

We made it to the GIFF event a few minutes before start, but had to skip the last part of the cachetur.no lecture to get there in time (but we do know that tool pretty well 😉 ). Personally, I think the quality has decreased since we attended the first GIFF in seattle in 2013. But there was a few good films this year. Specially Geocaching is free! That one nailed it!

A few more

Before fumbling in the dark after daylight, we did a short walk to find the virtual cache at the castle, GC7B70J Uppsala Slott, and GC1Y91Y The Monark´s Right Hand. We also had time to do some shopping and a few minutes of just relaxing at the event.

We also met a familiar face 😀

It was eventually time to put caches into our GPSr, a very important FAD tradition.

Fumbling after daylight

And then it was time to head out! We fumbled around in the dark (sorry, that name is stuck), and also lots of fun in the dark! Geocachers everywhere, lots of flashlights and long lines of people at the “caches”. We had to visit the FAD bar as well, of course.

Milestone

We had the pleasure of witnessing kawlii’s 4000 milestone last year, and now we had the pleasure of joining EiFlei when he logged his number 4000 😀 Congratulations!

The next FAD

No FAD is complete without the ending speech, and the announcement of next year’s FAD. We had an internal guess between us, and we were all very wrong… Next year’s FAD will be further north than ever before, in Sundsvall.

A nice bonus was that we won a couple prizes in the raffle 😀

A couple events before we leave

We started the last day of the trip with a couple events in Uppsala, GC7DV3P Autumn cleaning of Stadsträdgården and GC7CG5R AFTER FAD – Uppsala domkyrka / Uppsala Cahtedral. We also took the opportunity to find the virtual, the traditional and the earthcache near the cathedral.

The events was a nice opportunity to meet more people we know for one last time on this trip. Before we left Uppsala, we took advantage of the daylight to do a new attempt at a cache we DNF-ed in the dark on Friday, GC3212M 40 – Fyrislund. It was a easy find this time, and after a short lunch break, it was time to leave Uppsala.

Fantastic caches

We did a detour on the way to the airport, to find some large caches. We had some trouble finding the right way, with heavy roadwork, closed roads, new roads etc. But we eventually found a way. After the large caches, we continued to a area with lots of high FP-caches. And we quickly understood why the caches here had so many favorite points!

GC61CX5 Räddaren i nöden and the caches around are really worth a visit! We had lots of fun, and we also have to leave a lot of favorite points here…

One last event

We read about GC75DE7 Meet & Greet The Dutch during FAD, and since it wasn’t too far from the airport, we decided to attend. We also found a mystery cache and a traditional at the event 😀

The fast way home

We delivered the car, damage free, but dirty 😛 A very nice car, that served us well during the weekend!

We arrived early, intentionally, at the airport. It was nice to have time to sit down, eat and relax a bit. And since we wasn’t the only ones going home, we met more Norwegians 😀 Suddenly we had the Cachers of the round table.

A couple flights later, we arrived back home. Another fantastic trip! Thank you so much EiFlei + anirt ♥ for a fantastic trip! And thanks to everyone that took time to say hello to us. There’s so many great geocachers, and you are a big part of this fantastic activity!

Pictures

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