Southside Virginia Geocachers Gathering 3/2/2013

Sumajman & El Novio

Door prize time!!!!

sumajhuarmi & El Novio making a find

What a place for a cool cache!!!!

Cool cache whatchamacallit thingy

It all started when I met Spring1 at a geocaching event in Randolph County, NC several weeks back. They indicated that they were having a Spring get together near Danville, Va. Then my daughter called from Lynchburg begging us to attend a very special honor ceremony at her school the same night. She said she would like to see us earlier in the day but couldn't as she had too much homework. Would we come later. You betcha!!! This gave us time to cache our way up and make it to the event: Spring Meet and Greet (GC45RG). We picked up our daughter's fiancee about 9 a.m. and headed north up Highway 29 out of the High Point/Greensboro area. All the way Arturo was practicing for a debate in English. He is studying at UNC-Greensboro in an intensive English-language program. We helped him with pronunciation and grammer so he could get the opening statement down just right.  We thought it would be a chance for him to learn something about a subset of our culture: geocaching and geocachers. We stopped and grabbed a hand full of caches in Angler Park in Danville. It is loaded and we'll have to come back to Danville specifically to hunt for caches in this great park. We continued our cache hunt right up until the 11 a.m. time for the meet and greet. When we got to the GZ the cars were already all around the quaint little Mom and Pop Country Style Cooking place called "The Corner Cafe". We made our way in past the Southside Virginia Geocacher Organization sign. We signed the event log and listed where we were from. Arturo isn't a geocacher but was loving the hunt on the way up. We quickly gave him a name (though not registered at geocaching.com). He became El Novio, meaning "the fiancee" in Spanish. They gave us door prize tickets. From there we visited around, making new friends and seeing a few from North Carolina who had also traveled up this way. The owners of the Corner Cafe are geocachers as well so the environment was very geocacher-friendly. After a great meal and conversation with other geocachers the drawing for prizes began. El Novio won the door prize for having come the longest distance. He came from Mexico City. Then sumajhuarmi won a t-shirt from the cafe. I was the big winner in the end because the t-shirt was too big for sumajhuarmi and the El Novio gave me the nametag!

We left the Corner Cafe and headed north once again. We picked up several more caches along the way. One of particular interest was a thingamagit thingy hidden in an old abandon farm site. The hunt was easy and the clues would get a blind man to it. I don't think I'm giving much away here. I found the cache container to be the most interesting. I actually had a hard time getting the lid off. After a while it came off and there was the tiny log.

I love geocaching events. They provide the perfect excuse for driving off to a distant place and then caching your way there and back. By the way, the honors celebration that night was great. We are proud of our daughter for her good work at Liberty University!!