An incredible way to end this evening..! We were riding off the high of our just-found sixth thousandth geocache as it started raining lightly and we headed back into the city. I love going crazy and writing mega stories about days, but I always get a little overwhelmed during vacations and want to write the most inclusive logs to detail Laura and my adventures. But time-wise, it’s real intense, and with this being a vacation in the middle of a table full of piled-up work, I have to double slap myself across each wrist and really limit the time I spend writing these logs. After all, today was pretty intense. Like most vacations, we don’t really plan our days around geocaching, at least I feel like we don’t. But still, somehow we ended up visiting an impressive 21 geocaches today. And we didn’t even drive. We enjoyed being real tourists, drinking Becherovka from a flask, eating those sugar waffles, and tasting the funky spring water. But again; today wasn’t about geocaching. We set out with one short(er) hike in mind, and ended up hiking just over 18 kilometers. We visited several Waymarks and countless adventure labs, but now I have to embarrassingly try to punch my keyboard for those twenty plus logs..! (And, as I just texted my friend in the US; these are the days a stamp is really worth it). Oh, which reminds me….. Today we finally crossed our milestone of 6k finds, which was slowly creeping up to us, and whizzed by as soon as we crossed the new year…! Alright, here it goes..
We started our day after breakfast by getting up to the Goethe viewpoint, and I’m glad we got there. It was a beautiful sight and a surreal building to see completely deserted, within the forest, unfortunately closed until spring. We stopped there for a minute to take in the wonderful view and after that walked downward back towards the town, wandering through the beautiful forest. At times the dirt roads were quite literally mud roads, and we enjoyed the company of some of the wooden ghost characters at the top of the hill, followed by incredibly beautiful viewpoints overlooking the town which we passed every couple of minutes. We then found our milestone 6k’th find, after which we made it to the Becherplatz for a nice lunch, and then continued searching and walking through this beautiful city. Heading back upward through the main boardwalk, our last task today was to visit an epic local letterbox, which due to unexpected ‘renovation’, we weren’t able to find. To make it worse, we headed back to our hotel and on the way back logged yet another DNF along the way. Two DNFs are never a way to end a day, so we decided that since this 100%-FP-rate new cache from one of our favorite COs was right in our way. Only 17 logs and all of them incredibly positive, this wasn’t one to miss while here.
Not being locals, we didn't have a hint about how to get to GZ and it seemed more reasonable approaching from above then from below. So we arrived there and after standing 17 meters away from the cache, we looked at each other and both gulped. It was dark, just started to rain, and this seemed very sketchy. But I went down, after minutes found the cache. I didn't expect anything else, but how to get in? I was at the container and Laura was above; it was dark and raining, we didn't see each other. Then the code presented itself. I had no clue and was starting to freeze. I called Laura and we tried to figure it out remotely. After another few minutes, I finally figured out the missing thing I didn't see. Then we both started solving, and nearly at the same moment figured out the right combination. I then got in and my jaw dropped at what I was witnessing. Oh my. This. Is. Incredible! This was without doubt the coolest cache we found so far on our trip. This most beautiful, electric cache lit up in the darkness….. What a find! So honored to take this TB here!