SNAP!!! Geocaching: April 2017

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Another Item Crossed off our Geocaching Bucket List (2 of 5)

Nana and I took a geocaching trip in early April

traveling around Virginia with hopes of completing

several items on our Geocaching Bucket List.

By the end of our trip, we had completed

five, yes FIVE, of those items.

And Yes!, we had all sorts of fun

doing them.

This is a quick story about one of the items!

#2 - Virginia Delorme Blocks 72 and 64

For the better part of a year, all we have had left as far as Delorme

blocks for the state of Virginia were blocks 64 and 72.

So you can imagine my anticipation when we got ready

for this trip and both blocks were on our target list!

Only 2 blocks left

On the 3rd day of the trip we had plotted a route that took us west from

Harrisonburg, VA on US 33 up into the mountains. Block 72 was the first block

colored in with finds at:

GCTVDF: Stumpville, USA - we parked at the back gate to the park and walked in for the quick grab.

Locust Springs Picnic Area

We also managed to complete a really nice Multi-cache right at the state line giving us 2 finds for block 72:

GC2AHAD: The ABCs of Geocaching: I is for Information Sign - a really

neat multi-cache at two separate pull offs!

It had snowed recently

We continued on into West Virginia, grabbed an Earthcache at another overlook, then

took a left at Judy Gap WV and continued south until we saw the signs for

Locust Springs and the final block of our Virginia Delorme Challenge!!!

GC12PZQ: Locust Springs - Block 64B - might be the only cache in Virginia Block 64 (A or B).

Yes, that is snow in the background!

After arriving at the very nice picnic area - it was about a 1/2 mile walk to the cache.

As you can tell by the pictures, it had recently snowed in the are so the walk

to GZ was a little damp but nothing terrible. I would like to tell you that we arrived at

GZ and found the cache right away but.... it took us far too long to make the find.

The cache is there but the winter weather had made finding the cache a little more challenging

than we had anticipated but our persistence paid off.

Papa near GZ

We now have completed the Virginia Delorme Challenge!!!

Finally - another item marked off our Geocaching Bucket list!!!

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OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT
SNAP!!!-land is scheduled to be archived towards the end of September 2017
See - GC503GY
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Till next time...

Stay Safe & Keep Caching!!!

Suffolk Nana & Papa - - - or just plain ol' - - - - SNAP!!!

On Twitter at: @SNAPgeocaching

On Instagram at: snap_geocaching

Friday, April 21, 2017

Another item crossed off our Geocaching Bucket List

Nana and I took a geocaching trip in early April

traveling around Virginia with hopes of completing

several items on our Geocaching Bucket List.

By the end of our trip, we had completed

five, yes FIVE, of those items.

And Yes!, we had all sorts of fun

doing them.

This is a quick story about one of the items!

#1 - Buffalo Mountain a.k.a. Floyd County, VA

Back in December of 2012, Nana & I were trying to fill in some Virginia Counties when we happened upon Floyd County. At the time there were only three geocaches right in the heart of Floyd County and one of them had disappeared and had a long list of DNFs on the page.

That left two:
GC1J1HX - eye high - 7 favorite points
GCNNZP - Buffalo Mtn. Preserve Cache - 35 favorite points

At the time, we got lost trying to get to the parking coordinates, eventually gave up and put the county, and these two caches, on our Geocaching Bucket List.

Fast forward to early April 2017.

Thanks to Google Maps we were able to plot our path to first the main gate and then up the gravel road to the parking area.

After a hard climb, we first made a fast find at "eye high" and then a short while later the second find on the mountain - "Buffalo Mtn. Preserve Cache"

Can you see the cache?

Nana at the top of Buffalo Mountain

To be honest the Buffalo Mountain cache did take us just a few minutes to find - but we might have been distracted by the view!

After making the finds we started the zig zag trail back to the SNAP!!!-mobile
and proudly crossed Buffalo Mountain off of our bucket list!
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Several weeks later I was looking at the same area and saw something surprising!

We had found those caches on April 7th - two days later,
on the 9th, another cacher hide another cache on the mountain!!!