A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog on how sometimes, the
best geocaching trips are the last minute trips, with no planned agenda other
than to stay gone for a weekend and go geocaching. On the other hand, we just completed a
geocaching trip that had been on the calendar for months.
Several months ago we found out that one of our sons who
geocaches under the name of GeoChef74 had several of his caches nominated for a
local award for Best Geocahcing Series in the Northern Virginia area. There was an event planned to name the
winners of the awards and Nana & I figured it would be a big surprise if we
showed up.
While planning this trip we noticed there were quite a few
different types of caches in the area.
Once you have been geocaching for a while, you will begin to hear about
Geocaching Challenges or Challenge Caches.
One of the different types of Challenge Caches is City/County – where
you must find at least one cache in every County and Independent City in Virginia. Another type is Types of Geocaches (sometimes
called Busy Day Challenges) – where in order to claim a find on the cache you
must find 5, 6 or 7 different types of caches in a single day. We had been working on the County/City
challenge for quite some time but while looking at the map of the area we
realized there was a pretty good chance we could qualify for the Busy Day
challenge if we were lucky.
We got up early and found a nearby Traditional cache but
then ran into a problem at an Earthcache.
To claim the find at the Earthcache we needed to be able to get inside a
local spot but the hours of operation had changed and the place no longer
opened at 8AM. We hung our heads and
moved on to a nearby Virtual and grabbed the needed information for that find.
We then proceeded over to Claude Moore Park and assisted the
NoVaGo geocachers clean up around the park for their CITO event. After turning in our trash bag we then
grabbed a very nice and well laid out Puzzle cache in the park.
The next few hours we hung out with the NoVaGo cachers at the
award event and got some directions to another nearby Earthcache.
Our son did not win the award for Best Series but as the
event wrapped up we all piled in the vehicles and headed over to a quick
Multi-cache nearby.
We followed the directions the local cachers had given us
and then walked part of a fantastic biking trail to claim our Earthcache for
the day.
As we made our way back to our son’s house for what ended up
being a very nice dinner and visit, we grabbed a few more caches in the area
but ended up grabbing a very nice Puzzle box in downtown Fairfax to qualify for
our Busy day Challenge with 8 different Types of caches found on a single
day!!!
Traditional Cache - GC29RY1 – A Tiny TB Hotel
CITO – GC45MBZ - NoVAGO 2013 CITO at Claud Moore
Puzzle Cache – GC2RVB3 – A Walk Along Vestal’s Gap
Event Cache – GC45VT8 – 2013 NoVAGO … Celebrate Spring At
Claud Moore
Multi-Cache – GCGPWG – Virginia Trains and Roads
Earth Cache – GC2AJ1D – Quarry Overlook Earth Cache
Letterbox – GC3P481 – Independence Day
As Nana & I were driving home the next day we stopped in
each city and county we needed for the Virginia County and City
Challenges. By the end of the trip we
had found caches in 11 different Counties and/or Cities, filled in 3 more
Delorme pages and had a total of 30 finds added to our total.
Yes, sometimes the best geocaching trips are those last
minute – just take off – trips, but you can have quite a lot of fun on the
planned trips also!!!
As always – Stay Safe & Keep Caching!!!
SNAP!!! – Suffolk Nana & Papa
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