Northern Virginia Geocaching Organization

What were your favorite caches of 2015? This is your chance to nominate those cache that took you on amazing adventures to amazing places! Which were amazingly creative or which drove you mad with the challenge? Did you see something new and unique or one that was extremely well executed? Does one answer the question, which is your favorite cache? Help recognize the great caches and the people who placed them by nominating your favorites for the 2015 NoVAGO Cache Awards!

Every year, the NoVAGO community nominates and selects the best caches hidden in the previous calendar year. It’s an opportunity for area cachers to help recognize those that make caching in Northern Virginia a great experience and also a terrific way to highlight caches worth making a detour for.

You can find information on the award categories and eligible caches in this forum thread: NoVAGO’s 2015 Cache Awards Nominations.

Nominations are currently open and all are encouraged to submit their list of memorable caches! Once nominations close at the end of February, we’ll pull together the ballot, voting will open, and winners will be announced at NoVAGO’s Spring Event. All NoVAGO members are eligible (and encouraged) to submit nominations, whether many or just a few. The more members that participate, the more representative of NoVAGO the awards are! Nominations are easy to submit, either by email or this handy form.

Don’t let your most memorable caches get overlooked: send in your nominations today!

Come out and join NoVAGO at our Winter Event (GC69PHC) on Saturday, February 20th from 9:30am to 12:00pm at the Veteran’s Memorial Park Community Center, 14300 Veteran’s Drive, Woodbridge, VA 22191.

In addition to providing some breakfast nibbles, we’re also doing a brunch potluck (please post what you plan to bring in your “will attend” log). We will have two short presentations, one by DePhogration on cache containers and one by NutmegBrownie on how easy it is to host a CITO!

At this year’s NoVAGO Winter Event we are holding a canned food and coat drive to help support a local charity. This winter’s featured charity is The StreetLight, a nondenominational nonprofit organization who’s mission is to “build strong community by improving the quality of life for impoverished men, women, and children, including the ‘chronically homeless’ in Prince William County and surrounding areas of Northern Virginia.” Donations are purely voluntary and not required however those bringing donations will be entered into a raffle for a caching related prize.

Welcome to 2016! I hope everyone had a chance to earn the souvenir as a great welcome to the New Year. Thank you for all the support as we embark on a new adventure. I’m looking forward to an exciting year of caching with my fellow board members, Christina (NutmegBrownie), Mike (CacheClown76), Josh (Hooclass2002) and Chris (Awesnap).

If you have the time, we’d love to see you at the Thanks! Event tomorrow evening (January 5) where we will be saying thanks to last year’s officers and volunteers. This is also a great opportunity to meet some of the new board members as several of them will be there as well. And mark your calendars for the morning of February 20 for the Winter Event, we’ll get the cache page published soon with more information.

We look forward to introducing quarterly CITOs this year as well as some NoVAGO sponsored workshops. We aim to get dates with more information out soon and will be asking for volunteers to help along the way.

We’re also looking at adjusting NoVAGO’s 501(c) non-profit status in an effort to get more outside donations for the organization and increase our ability to offer more throughout the organization and our communities.

If you would like to send any questions, thoughts or ideas to the board, you can e-mail 2016officers@novago.org to get your e-mail to all the NoVAGO officers at once.

See you on the trails,
Katie (K8Ydd)

Every Cacher down in Cacheville liked Cachemas a lot…
But the Grinch, who lived just north of Cacheville, did NOT!

NoVAGO is proud to announce the 2015 Cachemas series:

How the Grinch Stole Cachemas!

Oh no! The Grinch has stolen gifts from cachers around the area, and we need your help! Beginning today, you and your fellow NoVAGO members can help us locate the stolen gifts.

Seek out each of the How the Grinch Stole Cachemas “gifts” and collect the clue from each one. Once you’ve collected them all, use the clues to solve the final puzzle and find the Finale! We won’t reveal how many HtGSC caches there will be (the Grinch is sneaky you see), but when the final is published, if you’ve found all the Cachemas gifts, you’ll have everything you need. You can use this bookmark list to follow the series.

Dress warmly, load up your cache-sleigh, and go seek!

Looking for something to do this weekend? NoVAGO is supporting three events on Saturday, November 14 going on around the Northern Virginia and Maryland area. In no particular order, they are:

• The 2nd Annual Occoquan Bay Refuge CITO hosted by DePhogration
  Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge, 10 am to 12 pm
  This is a great opportunity to give back to the community and the parks our Geocaches call home. DePhogration has organized many successful NoVAGO CITO events in the past, and this one should be no exception.
• Geocaching Symposium 2015 hosted by APLCachers
  The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, MD, 8 am to 1:30 pm
  NoVAGO has been asked to support the APL Geocaching Symposium, a day of education and community-building at APL. We’ll staff an informational table and be on hand to answer questions about Geocaching in Northern Virginia, and in general.
• “The Great Outdoors” Expo hosted by the Boy Scouts of America
  Haymarket, VA, 12 pm to 5 pm
  NoVAGO has worked with the Boy Scouts on a number of occasions this year, and we were recently contacted to help at their Great Outdoors Expo. Nothereeither has graciously volunteered to lead our participation. Contact him for more details.

If you’re looking to join your fellow NoVAGO cachers, consider meeting up with us at one of these events! See you there!