The route this first day took us from Stavanger to Denver, via Copenhagen and Toronto. We drove from Karmøy to Stavanger the day before.

We picked up the rental in Denver, and had only a couple miles to drive down to the first hotel… We almost didn’t have anything planned for the first day, since we had more than enough with the long journey from Stavanger to Denver.

Approximate time on road/out caching:  25 hours, 5 minutes (including travel time from Norway)
Total miles driven: 13.9 mi / 22,4 km
Total caches found: 1
Total DNF: 0
States visited: Colorado
Biggest surprise: How difficult it was to find the rental car
Weather: Mostly sunny
Highest temperature: 30,6°C / 87°F
Lowest temperature: 30,6°C / 87°F

Early up

We got up around 4am, and left the hotel before 4:30. The first flight, to Copenhagen, was scheduled for 6am – and we know from previous experience that arriving early can be a very smart move. We didn’t have any issues this time, but it was nice having a couple minutes extra to get (over priced) breakfast at the airport.

Getting some rest in Copenhagen

We had some hours to spend in Copenhagen, so we found a nice place to sit down. The plan was to watch a Netflix movie, but that didn’t happen…

The flight to Toronto was a long one, but uneventful and not too unpleasant.

Where’s our boarding pass?

When we arrived in Toronto, we expected to spend some time waiting in line for the pre-clearance in the inter-border terminal. We did not expect to spend time waiting for the last boarding pass (which they weren’t allowed to print in Stavanger). There were lots of very friendly Air Canada staff around, but none of them had access to the system that could give us a boarding pass – we needed help from United to get that.

So we were stuck in limbo for roughly one and a half hour! And then finally, after the very nice Air Canada people had called them many times, United showed up – and we got our boarding pass.

The silver lining, there was no line left at immigration.

Where will we land?

After spending another hour at the airport, it was finally almost boarding time for the last leg to Denver. Once we got on board, we were told that we couldn’t leave yet. Due to thunderstorms in Denver, the airport was temporarily shut down, and we had just been given a new flight route. This meant that we would fly a detour to get around the storm, and therefore needed more fuel.

When we left Toronto, we didn’t know if we would land in Denver or in Colorado Springs. Thanks to the awesome crew, we made it safely down to Denver (although a bit bumpy at the end) – where the weather had changed to the better. Didn’t even land that much behind schedule.

The best car ever

We arrived at the rental facility not too much later, where we immediately spotted the perfect car. The same as we started with in Denver last year, a Subaru Outback. Sadly it had all sorts of warning lights flashing at us when we started it, including the check engine light. But a short trip to the counter later, we got a similar car, but better equipped, with less miles on it and no warning lights 😀

Early night

We only found one cache this day, GC2MGKQ # 52 Jungle Green. And after shopping for some basic road trip supplies, we went straight to the hotel. We had planned a trip to our regular Denver pizza place, but decided that we should probably get some sleep instead – 25 hours after we left the hotel in Stavanger…

Pictures