On Sunday, October 22, 2023, NoVAGO held its annual Fall Picnic. The event was held in Lorton on the new Laurel Hill Central Green. Prior to the event there was a CITO event, also on the Central Green. During the event, several geocaches published around the park. There was also a silent auction which took place during the event.
This year’s NoVAGO board is a high functioning team and while all the members contributed advice the following were there in person to make the 2023 NoVAGO Fall event as success!
TrexM8s compared locations and found one big enough for our group. She worked with the park managers to make the event a success, including getting permission for the CITO and the caches hidden in the park. In addition, she helped organize the silent auction. ThompsonKickers provided a new twist to the icebreaker, decorations, several donations and her positive energy. Hrothroc promoted the event and provided a welcome to cachers and assisted freddiecrs with the auction payments — what a line! Dephogration was the grill master and brought the hamburgers, hot dogs an other supplies, cleaning of the grills and the wind made his job that much more difficult this time. Nothereeither was the designated onsite photographer and took the group picture – getting everyone in! Awesnap: Published the colorful pages for the the GCACC6C: Clean up the Green CITO BINGO with NoVAGO and GCABN9Y 2023 NoVAGO Fall Event: Laurel Hill Central Green. He created a BINGO card for the CTIO – not that cachers need incentive to clean up but some do like a competition! He also created the Adventure Labs and Bonus: NoVAGO Moviepalooza: The Mouse House BONUS cache was able to be found by completing the two part NoVAGO Moviepalooza: The Mouse House Adventure labs. TP711 provided one of the labs.
Board members weren’t the only ones helping out. TrexM8s came up with the idea that we should have as many different types of caches on the same day. No small task, she reached out to rlobecker who helped her scope out possibilities and the park manager Marcos Suarez approved all seven spots selected. Cachers now have the opportunity to find 7 caches and 10 adventure labs – in addition to all the other fun caches in the Lorton park area. In addition to the labs, a few of the best Springfield area cacher hiders stepped in to help place caches that showcase the variety of types:
Earthcache: Bric(k) a brac by kiisikwa
Letterbox: Letterbox at Laurel Hill by SP4FUN
Multi: Stretch your legs multi-cache by TrexM8s
Puzzle: geoCAPTCHA by rlobecker
Traditional: Let’s play Disc GolfTrexM8s
Wherigo: Sleepy Hollow by CwillyPngn
Thanks to everyone that donated items to the auction! The Maryland Geocaching Society (MGS), REI-Woodbridgeand others provided a wide variety of auction items. Thanks to LMNLanchot for keeping the bid sheets and goods in their proper place. The wind did it’s best to mix things up! The funds go towards the picnics, community out reach events and awards handed out at the Spring 2024 picnic for the best of 2023.
It is awesome that the above is a long list as these events are hard for any one or two individuals to pull off on their own.
However, everyone contributed if the brought food, moved tables, picked up trash and items that blew away, answered questions, shared their experiences, performed an act of kindness, found caches, and had FUN.
Thank you all for a wonderful day!
*This article was co-written by TrexM8s and hrothroc.