söndag 3 november 2013

Adventure #10 - Fumble After Dark

Now we have completed our 5th Fumble After Dark geocaching event and our 10th Light My Fire Adventure. As always, FAD was a great experience!

It has been a tradition in our family to spend a few days each fallbreak with the kids to travel down to the Gothenburg area to attend the Fumble After Dark event. Since the event took place closer to home this year we changed the tradition and just made it into a daytrip. We also made the day a bit more "teenager-friendly" by not attending the day part with lectures.

So, we arrived about an hour before the evening part started. Just enough time to feel in the atmosphere, mingle and get into the right caching mode. Around 17.00 we waited in line to load the coordinates for the evening caches into the GPS. That part went very smoothly, not an easy job to help 800 geocachers get ready! We got some instructions about the evening and a folder with maps and all the caches. An hour later we were released into the night with our headlights on!

Getting ready
The caches during FAD are mainly temporary caches that you cannot log online. The event is more about the experience rather than the statistics and number of logs. For beginners I think this was a bit confusing, you don't find a cache with a log book as you normally do. We helped to explain that to several cachers that we met during the evening. Next year I think I will write a "Beginner's guide to FAD" to explain the whole concept better before the event.

Our plan for the evening was to focus on the caches that were different and fun. However, it's not that easy to know exactly which caches are fun, but usually the "mystery caches" are the ones that are more elaborate. This year Groundspeak (the company that runs Geocaching.com) has also launched a new type of cache - Labs. It's a cache that is only available during an event and that you can actually log online, so we wanted to find some labs caches as well.

There was a heavy mist during the evening which helped to enhance the Halloween theme

In the middle of the woods...

One of the Lab caches - Freaky Christine!


We did find some fun and unusual caches and enjoyed the Halloween theme that we could see on many of the caches. Since this was our fifth year we recognised quite a few of the caches that we had seen before, so this year we were not as impressed as the first years.

We appreciate all the effort that the organizers have put into this event. Thank you so much! Next year the event will move to Skåne in the south of Sweden. We'll try to make it - but maybe it's time to leave the teenagers home next time!

/A

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