On the back of my challenge of the longest distance in a day for 2 cache finds (one in South Australia and one in Nevada), I thought I would do another challenge – longest drive for a First to Find (FTF).

My drive started at the Clare Caching Capers II Event GC3FXFG, where I was told of an unfound challenge cache up in Darwin.

The challenge involved having found a cache in every 10km band from your home location up to your age x10 so in my case 490 km.

It is GC3MBC5 – The Well-Travelled and Aged Cacher: NT.

I did the queries in GSAK and found that I had found a cache in the 49 distance bands required. Now to get the cache and hopefully a FTF.

I was heading north anyway so a long distance FTF was going to be a bonus.

Well after 4 days and 2902 km I arrived at ground zero (GZ) to find it all burnt out and on the ground were some burnt spray cans and a sorry looking eclipse tin. Surely this wasn’t it.

I looked over a couple of metres and there appeared to be something buried. I unscrewed it and it appeared to be the cache or was it.

I opened the container only to find a puzzle to be solved to find the final GZ.

Thinking caps on and a few texts to the owner on clues to solving the puzzle then finally about 10:30 pm I had the puzzle solved.

The only problem is that I would not be able to get to the final GZ for another 18 hours due to my commitments in Darwin.

It seemed a long day but finally the time came to find the cache.

I drove up to GZ, thinking surely the FTF would have gone by now. Opened the ammo tin, took out the log book, opened it up to find …… I was FTF. 😀

So after 5 days and 2902 kms (plus a few extra back and forth into Darwin) I had a long distance drive FTF.

I guess now how many have driven further for a FTF …