The NoVAGO Geocache Awards polls are now open to vote for your favorite geocaches, geocachers, and logs from 2017. Voting is open to all NoVAGO members and will be closed at midnight on March 31st NEW DATE APRIL 2nd. Go to the NoVAGO’s 2017 Cache Awards — Voting for more information.
Congratulations to Nothereeiether for his winning photo titled “Finding more than caches!” of HooClass2002 and Cache Clown 76 finding a special made tree 
just for them while on The Beaver Trail. We also offer a big thank you to everybody who participated in the January 2018 photo of the month contest.
Next month’s Contest is now open. Please post your entries for the February 2018 Photo of the Month Contest forum.
Remember that at the end of the year all of the monthly winning photos will battle it out for the NoVAGO 2018 Photograph of the Year title. That winning photographer will be awarded a NoVAGO Cache Awards Geocoin at our annual Spring Event & NoVAGO Cache Awards presentation.
Join us February 25th, 2018 for NoVAGO’s Winter CITO as we help clean up the area around the Jerome “Buddie” Ford Nature Center. This City of Alexandria nature center is located on a 50-acre park nestled along the Holmes Run Stream. This center provides year-round programs, interactive exhibits, as well as taking care of over 30 live animals.
This event is being organized in coordination with Nature Center staff, and is designed to assist them in keeping this area clean and beautiful.
Awesnap at the head of the class. Photos by Effstop
On Saturday February 3, 2018 thirty geocachers piled into a classroom for Awesnap’s Planning a Geocaching Road Trip Class. Our new President, Plato Addict, want’s 2018 to be the year NoVAGO host’s more educational events. On the horizon there are plans to host classes on a variety of subjects including GSAK, puzzle solving, cachetur.no, earthcaching 101, and a basic cache page creation class.
The Geocaching Road Trip class was held in Prince William County at the Chinn Library. Awesnap’s presentation covered the basics of distance caching, selecting target geocaches, routing, project.gc, and a quick introduction to cachetur.no.
JPWAVE wrote in his log “I learned quite a bit more than I expected!! Yeah, I may do things in my own fashion but it’s really nice to see other options and new webtools which may be more efficient. EXCELLENT class!! Really looking forward to using these tips on our next road trip!”
Ezio10 wrote “Learned quite a bit from the presentation, particularly the features from Project GC and a site I never I heard of before, cachetur.”
A few NoVAGO members who missed the class expressed interest in the seeing the power point so we have attached it here for you to download: Roadtrip Class Power Point
Loading ...Congratulations to all of the 2017 NoVAGO Cache Award nominees! To see a complete list of nominated cachers and caches please go to the NoVAGO’s 2017 Cache Awards — Nominees thread in the forums. This year a record breaking 28 cachers nominated 624 the best geocaches, logs, and geocachers of Northern Virginia from 2017.
Voting will take place in late March and the winners will be announce at the 2018 NoVAGO Spring Event (TBA). Check back in the future as we update the information on this. In the meantime we encourage all NoVAGO members to hunt down and find these caches before voting.
On a sad not there will not be a 2017 NoVAGO Nominations Bonus Cache, nor does it look like there will be anymore in the future. The current challenge cache rules that Groundspeak place in 2017 prohibit challenge caches based on lists of geocaches.