SNAP!!! Geocaching: Virginia

Showing posts with label Virginia. Show all posts

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Two more items crossed off the Geocaching Bucklet List (3 & 4 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.

~~1) Buffalo Mountain Geocaches~~

~~2) Blocks 72 & 64 of the Virginia Delorme~~

3) Visit Old City Cemetery in Lynchburg

4) Find the Virginia Delorme Challenge Geocache

5) Find the Geocaches for both the Virginia Independent City

and the Virginia County Challenges

This is a quick story about items #3 and 4...

#3 - Visit Old City Cemetery in Lynchburg

Ever since we found our first cemetery cache, Nana has been hooked on cemeteries.

The history, the beautiful surroundings - both have made us look for

cemetery caches ever time we visit a new city.

Several months ago, Nana saw an article about Old City Cemetery in Lynchburg Virginia.

7 different museums, guided tours, 27 acres of history.
Old City Cemetery is the oldest continuously maintained cemetery in Virginia.

We added the location to our Geocaching Bucket List!!

While Nana toured some of the historic sites, I took a few minutes to

grab a local geocache on the property.

I then caught up with Nana and joined her while visiting the rest of the historic

places around the cemetery.

We spent the better part of the day tour the grounds and talking with the different

volunteers in the area.

3rd Item marked of our Geocaching Bucket List in one trip!!!

4) Find the Virginia Delorme Challenge Geocache

GCVYD4 - The Virginia Delorme Challenge.

I will let you in on a little (very little) secret. If you look at the cache page

for the challenge you will notice that the "?" on the map is

located in Arlington Virginia. In fact, if you zoom in on the map,

you will notice that the "?" is actually in the center courtyard of

the Pentagon!!!

The secret: Look at where the parking coordinates are!

Lynchburg, VA!!!

In fact, if you investigate the parking coordinates as well as the final coordinates

for the actual cache, you can get a lot closer before leaving your vehicle and starting out on foot

than you could of back in 2006 when the actual cache was originally hidden.

I will tell you this - be prepared for a very steep climb and descent!!!

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

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Picnic Recap and Upcoming Events

14th Annual GCHR Picnic Recap

Early in the morning of the 13th Annual GCHR Picnic we had a terrific rain shower. It lasted just over and hour but once it stopped - we had a terrific day!!!

Fast forward to last Saturday - Hurricane Hermine decided to pay the southern part of the Hampton Roads area a visit. Lucky for us geocachers, the picnic is held in the northern part of the area. Rain - yes we had it, Wind - yes we had that also. BUT... it wasn't anywhere near as bad as it could have been. In fact - for those of you who could not make it - we had a pretty darn good picnic.

Somehow, the picnic committee came up with a huge tent! The tent was large enough to hold the important stuff including our friends from Space Coast!!!

Just about everything, except the games, went off as planned. Signal showed up at various times during the day and made everyone happy!

Multi-tasking... I was holding the umbrella and helping escort Signal to the morning picture

14th Annual GCHR Picnic Photo

After the photo and another brief rainstorm the Lab Caches were published and most

of the attendees took off in numerous directions.

I set up on a middle table and answered local information questions, GSAK questions and then watched about 300 trackables make their way from one geocacher to another. REMINDER: There are still quite a few trackables logged into the page for the picnic - please don't forget to log any trackables you picked up.

The Picnic committee and volunteers did a terrific job!!!

Also - special thanks goes out to Dale and Barb from Space Coast Geocaching Store (click here to visit their store) - they not only showed up for the picnic but also donated geocaching gear to the picnic. They drove all the way from Florida in the storm just to attend our picnic. Please make sure to stop by their store anytime you need something geocaching related.

The log for the picnic

Thanks to everyone who braved the weather and came to the picnic!!!

UPCOMING EVENTS

Here are some other events in the area we plan to attend.

Mark your calendars – hope to see you at some of these events!

Saturday – September 17 – James City County, VA

GC6QHZ7 – Powhatan Creek PADDLING EVENTure

Just off of the blueway

10 till 11 AM

Tuesday – September 20 – Virginia Beach, VA

GC6Q9N0 – 3^rd Tuesday – HIDEY AWARD RALLY – GCHR Sept Event

Rick’s Cafe

6 till 8 PM

Tuesday – September 22 – Chesapeake, VA

GC6RGY0 – AACC – September 22, 2016

Elizabeth River Boat Landing Park

4 till 6 PM

Tuesday – November 1 – Virginia Beach, VA

GC6Q9TM – The Nominees Are…..

Rick’s Cafe

6 till 8 PM

Saturday – January 7 – Virginia Beach, VA

GC6HYJ2 – 10 Years! Milestones M-n-G and Hidey Awards!

Emmanuel Episcopal Church

5 till 9 PM

Till next time!!!

Stay Safe & Keep Caching!!!

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

On Twitter at: @SNAPgeocaching

On Instagram at: snap_geocaching

Monday, June 20, 2016

WE DID IT!!!

We Did IT!!!

Well, we finally accomplished something we have been working on for quite awhile. We finally found a cache in Charlottesville this last weekend. That means that we have found a cache in every county in the state of Virginia as well as a cache in every independent city in the state.

Now we qualify to find the two challenge caches that inspired this endeavor:

GC244RF - Virginia County Challenge which requires you to find at least one cache in each and every County in the state of Virginia - that means 95 finds - just to be able to find one cache!

The other cache is GC244VZ - Virginia Independent City Challenge which basically has the same requirement but this time for the 38 independent cities in Virginia.

Once you meet the requirement, you email your proof to the CO and then they supply the final coordinates to the cache.

notice the 134/134 on the top bar

We have already asked the CO for the final coordinates so hopefully, soon, we will be able to knock out those two great challenges!

While finishing those two I found two three others I might start working on; 1) GC24QBK Virginia Virtual Challenge, 2) GC39T9M Virginia Towns Challenge and 3) GC3D8MH Virginia Earthcache Challenge.

Reminder:

Please do no forget the page I have been updating: (look to the page list in the upper right of this page: 14th Annual GCHR PICNIC information.

Monday, June 6, 2016

An easy geocaching weekend.

Since we were out of town last weekend, and have two more trips coming up in the next few months, Nana & I decided to slow things down a little last weekend and 1) stay in the area and 2) grab some geocaches in an area we haven't been to in quite a long time.

We didn't put a lot of caches on the list because we knew today would involve quite a lot of hiking between caches. Once at the park we headed out only to get turned around after a 1/4 mile. An old trail Papa knew about was no longer available so we turned around and headed "the long way" to the caches. A little over 2 miles later we happened upon GZ for the first cache. A few minutes later it had been found and we headed towards the next one.

We continued through the park finding one cache after another on this out-of-the-way trail.

GC14MJR - A Trail That's Not A Trail - Found

GC2F402 - CJS - First landing State Park - Found

GC1EM8G - A Trail That's Not A Trail Part Two - Found

GC4DZNT - Old Seashore - Found

Note: We did not have the Multi-cache "Sushi Bean Memorial Cache" GC20BK2 on our hit list for the day because we had seen a note saying it needed maintenance - BUT - another cacher managed to make the find on it the same day we were out there!

After getting back to the SNAP!!!-mobile we took some time to rehydrate and rest for a few before driving around to the other side of the park and attempting two more caches:

GC5561M - Stump, Stump, SMASH! - another find

BUT...

GC69M0K - VSP First Landing 80th Anniversary Adventure eluded us. We looked at GZ (where our GPS put us), we tried at the location a previous finder said it would be, and we also tried where the hint said it would be. We failed in all three places before calling it a day!!! Would someone out there mind giving us a hint???

All in all, not a bad geocaching day!!!

Till next time!!!

Stay Safe & Keep Caching!!!

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

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Fiddlesticks... one more to go!

Gosh Darn it!

As most of you are aware... Nana & I took a rather circular route around the state of Virginia last week. The reasons for the trip were:

1) Find a cache in the 5 remaining Counties we had in Virginia

2) Find a cache in the 1 remaining Independent City we had in Virginia

3) Find the one cache we had on our list that would complete our D/T Grid

4) Have fun!!!

near the Rotunda

Well, 3 out of 4 ain't to bad!!!

D/T Grid is now full!!!

The problem was - we thought we went 4 for 4 until we got home and looked closely.

Complete EXCEPT for Charlottesville

Apparently, the entire campus of UVA is in the County of Albemarle, not in the city of Charlottesville as I thought. Granted, if we had slowed down a little and went for that "one more cache" instead of rushing to stay ahead of Tropical Depression Bonnie... well then.... but that didn't happen.

Oh well, now we have another reason to go back to the lovely city of Charlottesville!!!

Trip Recap - Day One

We won't go over EVERY cache we found on the trip but some of the highlights of the trip were:

1 - Westmoreland State Park - there were three caches here that we found (GC3P17R, GC6DB5M and GC5NZ5T) and the scenery was beautiful. The rangers and staff were very friendly and helpful but I guess the major surprise was the gift shop. I have seen all sorts of walking sticks on sale at events, stores and shops before but the gift shop at Westmoreland State Park had some wooden walking sticks at some unbelievable prices. No, I am not talking about the expandable walking sticks you can buy at Walmart or other places, I am talking about solid wooden carved walking sticks!!! YES, I did buy one and thought about buying several!

2 - I always love finding caches that offer a Benchmark at the same time so just let me mention GC1BD9K - Two Fer - a quick find cache that offers a Benchmark and a regular size cache.

3 - The Winner of the "Coveted" SNAP!!! Cache of the Day on Friday was a historic area cache called Stonewall... Mulberry's Revenge. We always love the historical caches and this one was a great cache too.

4 - An Earth Cache right on the banks of the Rappahannock River was the next jewel we found. GCZH2W - The Falls of the Rappahannock - what could be better, a nice walk, great scenery, several Waymarks and an Earth Cache all in about an hour of your time!!!

5 - If you are in the area south of Culpeper, Virginia - make sure your caching list contains this cute little quick find: GC3AT7G - SB: Quit Whining - a really quick find that will let you stretch your legs and get a find at the same time.

Trip Recap - Day Two

1 - After blowing our chance to find a cache in Charlottesville we did manage to grab 3 caches on the campus of UVA (GCJ0KP, GCH50T and GCROOJ) we made our way over to an area just south of tow. There, on a huge hill/small mountain was a cache we needed. Getting this one cache would complete our D/T grid!!! The problem was, once again, failure to properly plan for the difficulty and terrain of the target cache. Nana and I DID make the find. But by the end, it was all we could do to get our sorry, very very very tired bodies, back down to the SNAP!!!-mobile. Yes, we took water but not enough. We failed to take the towel to keep the sweat out of our eyes, we failed to take the cooling rags for the back of our necks, we failed to take snacks to keep our energy up. But - like I said - we DID make the find!!! If you are going to go for GC2MT7F - A Well Rounded Caching Day Challenge, you get to the parking area and see that small number indicated on your GPS for distance to the cache and figure - "Easy - I got this" - WRONG!!! That may be a very small distance away, but you didn't count on a very steep, switchback trail, that seems to go up and up and up and up without an end. Take our advice, take water, fresh legs, snacks, towels, more water, and an oxygen tank with you - you might just need all of it! We gave it a favorite point in the end - but it was a hard find!!!

2 - An out of the way cache that is worth the visit - GC45QN3 - SBC Sweet Views - located on the grounds of Sweet Briar College, this remote cache is worth your visit

3 - Another winner of the "Coveted" SNAP!!! Cache of the Day Award, a very quick find right off a busy highway - GC5JKJ7 - Dreamland.

Tropical Storm Bonnie kinda cut our trip down by a day but we still had fun and managed to get 3 of the 4 goals for the trip completed.

Till next time!!!

Stay Safe & Keep Caching!!!

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

Thursday, October 1, 2015

Alara's Wacky Adventure - 2015 edition

Once again, alara, our friend and personal caching guru, has decided, once again, it is time to test every one's fortitude. Usually once a year, alara comes up with a caching trip to test himself and others. It is usually an overnight trip to some distant location followed by a 1/2 day of more of hiking, elevation changes, scenery and at least one geocache.

The first time I heard about a wacky adventure was in 2011 when we did "Thousand Steps Cache' (GC59AF) in central Pennsylvania.

For 2015 alara has picked a really nice cache - GC2JJJD - McAfee Knob Challenge. How many times can you say you hiked almost 9 miles and got only one cache??? Check out the cache page.

October 9, 2015 - Nana, myself and of course alara will be spending the night in Salem Virginia. Saturday morning (9/10) at about 7:45 we will be at the parking area on Virginia Route 311 for the Appalachian Trail. At about 8AM, the group I already know about plus any others that want to come will leave the parking area and start on our way.