SLOGGERS Outing #4 was GREAT!!! - and more info

SLOGGERS Outing #4

SLOGGERS Outing #4 was a great success!!!

  

A little over 3 miles walked, 15 caches on the list and

we added another two (for some) so 17 were found.

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We had a great time with the biggest turnout so far!!!

It was very humid and warm and the start of the day but when we were at our

13th cache on the list the wind picked up.

By cache # 15 there were jokes about being blown away!

17 finds for most of the group

We then made our way about 2 miles north and had a great lunch - WITH Outdoor seating

Hope y'all come out and join us for our 5th Outing in June!!!

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SNAP!!!-land

Virginia's Largest Geo-Art

The latest on the archiving of SNAP!!!-land is as follows:

Due to the high number of emails requesting a hold on the archiving

of the series we have decided to wait until after the GCHR 15th Annual Picnic.

Archiving of the series will now be towards the end of September. 

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UPCOMING EVENTS - with some info

OFFICIAL EVENT – GC74BAV

Wednesday – May 24 – Chesapeake, VA

AACC - May 24, 2017 - #97

Chesapeake City Park

3:30 till 5:30 PM

OFFICIAL EVENT – GC75H78

Wednesday – June 7 – Newport News, VA

Burn 'n Brew Caching Crew (BBCC #1)

Traditional Brewery

6:45 till 8:00 PM

OFFICIAL EVENT – GC75VJ7

Thursday – June 8 – Chesapeake, VA

AACC - June 8, 2017 - #98

Chesapeake City Park

4 till 6 PM

OFFICIAL EVENT – GC6WWBC

Saturday – September 2, 2017 – Chesapeake, VA

15th Annual Geocaching Hampton Roads Picnic

Chesapeake City Park

This is our BIG event each year

come on out and meet geocachers from across the globe!

9 AM till 5 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

Another Item Crossed off our Geocaching Bucket List (5 of 5) and other stuff...

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 Deforme
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 the last story of our April trip - item #5!

#5 - Find the Geocaches for both the Virginia
Independent City and the Virginia
County Challenges

It was over a year ago when Nana & I completed the requirements for both
the Virginia Independent City Challenge Cache (GC244VZ) and the Virginia County Challenge Cache (GC244RF).  We submitted our caches to the CO and received
both corrected coordinates.  The only thing left to do was go find the cache.
We passed by (within a few miles) both caches several times throughout that
year and a half - but were in time crunch situations each time.  

After we finished up in Lynchburg, we slowly made our way down to
Lawrenceville, VA.  We had visited this park before which was when we first
learned of the two challenges.

We were surprised to find out both caches were a very short distance from
the parking area which allowed us to spend about half the time we had allotted
to make both finds and return to the SNAP!!!-mobile.

The last item (for this trip) was marked off our Geocaching Bucket List!!!

The Best Caches of our April Trip

GC33KA6 -  Take Me Out to the Ball Game II

Traditional - Mecklenburg County Virginia - 5 favorite points

GCNNZP - Buffalo Mtn. Preserve Cache

Traditional - Floyd County Virginia - 24 favorite points

GCGCH61V - Millin' & Stillin'

Virtual cache - Floyd County Virginia - 62 favorite points

GC2EQA6 - Mason Mill Park

Traditional Cache - Roanoke, Virginia - 1 favorite point

GCW7Q6 - Spinners End Redux

Traditional Cache - Roanoke, Virginia - 1 favorite point

GC2HAD - The ABCs of Geocaching: I is for Information Sign
Multi Cache - Rockingham County Virginia - 3 favorite points

GC12PZQ - Locust Springs
Traditional Cache - Highland County Virginia - 25 favorite points

GC2A78 - Bluegrass Valley Crossroads
Virtual Cache - Highland County Virginia - 30 favorite points

GC3RGB6 - Stonewall's Last Ride
Traditional Cache - Lynchburg, Virginia - 4 favorite points

GC546D - Vita Abundantior
Virtual Cache - Lynchburg, Virginia - 11 favorite points

GCVYD4 - The Virginia DeLorme Challenge
Challenge Cache - Lynchburg, Virginia - 42 favorite points

GC244RF - Virginia County Challenge
Challenge Cache - Brunswick County Virginia - 27 favorite points

GC244VZ - Virginia Independent City Challenge
Challenge Cache - Brunswick County Virginia - 27 favorite points

SLOGGERS Outing #4

As of right now, we are tentatively planning our next outing for

Saturday – May 20 – Virginia Beach, VA

Ashville Park 

Rain Date May 21

More info will be coming soon.

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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

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
-----------------------------------------

 Till next time...

Stay Safe & Keep Caching!!!

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

On Twitter at: @SNAPgeocaching

On Instagram at: snap_geocaching

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
-----------------------------------------

 Till next time...

Stay Safe & Keep Caching!!!

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

On Twitter at: @SNAPgeocaching

On Instagram at: snap_geocaching

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!
---------------------------------------------
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!!!

 Till next time...

Stay Safe & Keep Caching!!!

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

On Twitter at: @SNAPgeocaching

On Instagram at: snap_geocaching

S.L.O.G.G.E.R.S. - OUR FIRST ADVENTURE!!!

After more than one failed attempt - mainly due to the ever-changing weather of the Hampton Roads area - a small group of S.L.O.G.G.E.R.S. finally managed to pull off our first adventure.

What are S.L.O.G.G.E.R.S.????  Well, through several different iterations of the acronym - we finally settled on Sexy Looking Older Geocachers Going Everywhere Relatively Slowly.  Or, in other words, mature geocachers who can't move as fast as the young ones!!!

We all met up at First Landing State Park about 10AM, visited the Trail Center to check on the condition of the trails, and then headed out to see if we could locate some of the geocachers in the area.

Somewhere in the middle of our day we came upon a tree, slightly off one of the trails.  Mysteriously, it appeared as someone had been doing quite a lot of work on a small out-of-the-way hideaway.  A cabin in the woods?  One of the ladies in the group had a small "Peanuts" figurine of Lucy, so we stopped for a few and let Lucy explore.  I was told later, that even though she enjoyed the small cabin, she elected not to stay.

Someone has been doing some remodeling!

Lucy liked it!!!

A little over 3 miles later, after almost 3 hours, we finally made our way back to our vehicles.  After resting for a few we made our way to a local eating establishment, laughed about our day, and then decided we must do this again!!!

I will try to put together another group outing in February.  Hopefully we can find a weekend where the temps are not too cold.  It was also suggested, that we try something in Newport News Park!!!

Stay tuned for further details

We all had a great time!

Till next time...

Stay Safe & Keep Caching!!!

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

On Twitter at: @SNAPgeocaching

On Instagram at: snap_geocaching