Giving Thanks to everyone.

As this year comes to a close with all the hustle and bustle of holiday shopping, festivities, decorating and love I wanted to share my own little bit of love and appreciation.  Read on but don’t forget to join us on January 21, 2024 for our official NoVAGO Thanks Event GCAHRY9!

 

Geocachers, NEW Geocachers, COs & the Young or just Young at Heart

I have mentioned before, that it’s just not one person, nor is it just the officers or directors who make Northern Virginia an enjoyable place to cache and socialize.  It truly takes all of us for it to be fun and geocachers who find and hide caches are the driving force of NoVAGO.  In 2023 so far there have been 414 geocaches placed by fellow cachers in NoVAGO jurisdictions as of December 18th.  These have overall been found 8832 times!  The time and thought that goes into placing a new cache does not go unrecognized.  Geocachers need to find geocaches.   No matter if they may have struggled while searching or even had to PAF, in the end when they found the prize, they had a smile on their face and on their profile.

Where are all the young-un’s?  This year we have really exploded with younger cachers and families.  This youthful generation is the future of geocaching.  I would like to thank all the parents and family members out there who support these budding geocachers getting into the game.  Driving them around finding and hiding geocaches, helping them meet other cachers at events, and being 100% supportive of their growing love of geocaching.  To you, the young cachers, thank you for hanging out with all us older folks and jumping right in like you’ve known us forever. We love sharing our wisdom with you and are so happy to see you pursue knowledge & growing into great geocachers.  Your openness to learn is impressive.

This year 37 new cachers joined NoVAGO, so thank you to all of the Cache Owners this year creating new caching adventures for them.   AND WOW 37 new members that’s amazing, we must be really talking up geocaching in our travels.  Thank you to all of you who spread the NoVAGO word.  These new cachers are the perfect candidates for some of those tips & hints provided at events all around the region.

Thank you to those having events available for all to attend.  This year there were 225 events hosted and a total of 2381 logs posted on geocaching.com for just these events.  

Finally, thanks to you…The Geocacher, new and seasoned for being here to find those geocaches placed and attending those events.  

 

Keep’n it clean

Another great thing about geocachers is they like to take care of the community and where they geocache.  This is where CITOs shine!  This year we had 20 CITO events – great job to all who took the time to organize a CITO and collaborate with local parks and organizations to find areas that needed maintenance.  These collectively had 259 logs, that’s a lot of cleaning up, thank you to all who attended one or more of these events. 

 

Geocaching Community Volunteer Reviewers

I’d like to take a moment to thank the people out there who take their time reviewing ALL of the hundreds of caches, events, and CITO that we request to be published.  These cachers are the Geocaching Community Volunteer Reviewers and yes, that’s a long title because they are quite important. They have rules and cache standards that we all must follow in order to secure quality geocaches in our area.  They are readily available to answer questions about your cache, provide coordinate checks and give you tips on what you will need to adjust if your submitted geocache is for some reason rejected.  They must keep all caches within the proper location guidelines as well as making sure events don’t overlap and are within event rules and regulations.  They also monitor caches with low health scores and reports of caches that have been reported as missing or need maintenance, reaching out to COs for reminders when they need to check in on their caches for any overdue maintenance.

Our reviewers for all of the state of Virginia are YetAnotherReviewer (since 2017) and Cardinal Reviewer (since 2020).  Each of them have had many many many years of caching experience and a desire to keep the game live with caches that stick around for years to come.  Whenever you spot a reviewer at an event, they love to share their wealth of knowledge and hints in conversation.  This year YetAnotherReviewer will be retiring as a reviewer so if you know and see him, make sure you give him an extra pat on the back for an extra special thank you for all he has done over the last 6 years.

 

Donations Donations Donations

I’ve mentioned it before but would like to bring it up again because NOVAGO truly could not function without donations.  This year we had 65 donations, totalling around $800, that were received at the Fall Event and allowed us to net around $550 to support NoVAGO.  Thanks to all of you who donate to help the organization financially.  We would not be able to do what we do without funding.

 

Volunteer “WORK & PLAY”

It does not stop with monetary donations, fellow geocachers donate their own time.  This year we had the most recent series, MoviePalooza, led by a committee of three geocachers. SP4Fun (Susan) was the lead volunteer with help from Awesnap (Chris), and Freddiecrs (Freddie).  This task is not a quick, one day volunteer experience, there was planning, discussions, creation, ideas, collaboration with other cachers, TIME, and so much more.  This year Susan wrangled 21 geocachers to volunteer by creating a cache for the series.  These caches all had code words that are used to solve a mystery for the final, that she created & placed herself.  There were 23 total MoviePalooza caches placed that were a good mixture of cache types and each bringing their own personality. There were even three events!  I can not thank Susan enough for taking on this task and just running with it to make an amazing series adventure that now is out there for many finds to come.

We have some behind the scenes committees and volunteers who dedicate  a lot of time during the year helping shape NoVAGO into an amazing future organization.

You know those awards you hear about during the spring picnic, well a LOT of planning and organizing goes into gathering those nominated and out into the public eye for review.

During this time of the year, every year, fellow cachers decide who they would like to lead this amazing organization into the next year.  For this, we hold a members election.  To uphold the fairness we have a volunteer committee led by fellow members who are not on the ballot or the Board to organize the nominations, formalize a voting poll, and track all votes to determine a winner.  Remember – we are all winners no matter who is elected because those running have a heart and desire to improve NoVAGO and this committee shares YOUR vote for the following year.

Both of these are months long processes and not a quick simple task. In 2023 both the awards and election committees were led by Michael (Schwandt) and Jesse (MRPsyduck).  Thank you both for your dedication and time to NoVAGO.

 

Who else volunteers time?  

Well, Officers and Directors of NoVAGO of course

Each of us have our own personality and ideas that mix wonderfully together to get things done for you.  As President I’d like to thank each of them individually.

OFFICERS: 

VICE PRESIDENT – Radka/TheWanderesss, cacher since 2014 – Our newest officer as vice-president this year, she jumped in sharing ideas and great plans for the group.  We need a whole group of volunteers with ideas like hers.

SECRETARY – Monica/TrexM8s, cacher since 2006 – Here is your major logger,  being the keeper of all the meetings. Her notes are the minutes presented to the board and posted on line – for all of us cachers to see.  Monica also hosted our Fall Event this year, a task that is bigger than the average event and she jumped right onto the 123123 coins for extra NoVAGO funding and furnished an opportunity for the coins to be easily available to all.

TREASURER – Freddie/freddiecrs, cacher since 2015 – Money money and mo’ money, our cash counting queen.  She tracks every dollar that comes and goes our way. Without her we wouldn’t know how much money we can spend on all the fun stuff we do.

PUBLIC RELATIONS – Heather/hrothroc, cacher since 2016 – Everything you see and read from NoVAGO is her domain.  From our website, our Facebook page, to many events, she’s the one who keeps us all in the know and connects with the community to grow our presence. You really have no idea how hard she works and how much time and energy she contributes on your behalf!

DIRECTORS: 

Pete/Nothereeither, cacher since 2011 – Pete is immediate past president and has had years and years of NoVAGO experience and provides wisdom from that past and into the present.

Kirk/DePhogration, cacher since 2009, also has been around forever and a day.  Our fearless chef extraordinaire as you all know him, but here with the group he is another past president whose caching knowledge is unsurpassed.

Tom/CherokeeThree, cacher since 2001 and one of our rare charter geocache members. I am so glad to have him on our team. While he’s had a geocaching streak longer than most cachers, he is full of great caching experience and having that is needed when planning events and new series for all to enjoy.  Tom also hosted our Spring event this  year and it was an amazing location with a lot of new fun caches placed.

Patricia/Pfenix, cacher since 2004 – Former triple year NoVAGO secretary, an amazing team player dedicated, giving her all, whether it is donating or stepping in to volunteer, Patricia is team NoVAGO.

Cory/TheColdedge, cacher since 2014 – Representing the West-Side, Cory jumped in and being the youngest on the board he brought some amazing fresh ideas to the group.  He’s found just about every cache in his area, so if you ever are his way, he’s your best PAF!

Chris/Awesnap,  cacher since 2010 – I like to call Chris Mr. NoVAGO, I feel like he knows every cacher and every cache out there, he’s creative and helpful with ideas, cache designs, cache pages and willing to help wherever needed.

 

If you think I forgot YOU, I didn’t….

Everyone reading this has an interest and some level of involvement in geocaching.  So thank you, you and you for everything you have ever done, are doing today, or will do for NoVAGO, fellow geocachers and all things geocaching. Onward to 2024 we go, farewell 2023, but let the memories live on 🥰.