Greetings and a Southern HELLO from South Carolina!!
We are taking our vacation this year in my hometown of 18 years ago - Virginia Beach, and we thought it would cool to meet some fellow cachers while in the area. We have been caching for only 2 years now, and have enjoyed every minute of it. One of the things we enjoy most is meeting people and talking...well actually I enjoy talking more than HopsGeneral does...AgentGeo, my oldest daughter, enjoys talking as well...AgentSmiley, not so much...anyway, we were hoping that you would come visit with us.
Here's the plan:
Where: El Rodeo
5834 E Virginia Beach Blvd Norfolk,
VA 23502 (or where the coords take you..hopefully)
When: September 25 (Tuesday) at 7:00-9:00 pm (or 1900-2100 for you military folk...I was a navy brat)
What: Well eating, of course (everyone is responsible for their own check...sorry). We will have a trackable trade table and a discovery place (label them accordingly so they don't go missing). AgentGeo and AgentSmiley will have pathtags for trading if anyone is interested. We will also do a Geocaching Gift Exchange (see below).
If you want to participate, we will do a Geocaching Gift Exchange, or White Elephant Gift Exchange, or Yankee Swap, or Black Santa, or Chinese Gift Exchange, in south central Pennsylvania it is also called "Kamikaze Gift Exchange", or whatever you choose to call it. Don't know what that is? Here is how it goes:
- Everyone gets a randomly drawn number when they bring an unlabeled wrapped geocache-themed gift. No one leaves until all is done.
- Remember: the person who picks first always gets to pick last.
- The person with the lowest number picks first, He/She chooses a gift, opens it, and takes it back with them.
- Each person in order then picks a present, opens it, then chooses whether to keep it or exchange it for any other present that someone else has already received.
- Opening and swapping continues until all presents have been chosen.
- Finally, the person who picked first gets to choose from all the presents, or keep what he/she has already received.
If you have some geocaching item that's in very good condition but you're not using anymore, just wrap it up and drop it on the gift table, then grab a number. If you don't want to do that you can purchase a geocaching item (cost $5 - $10), wrap it up and drop it on the table, then grab a number. The items can be anything geocaching-related (ex. walking stick, geocoin, cache container, water bottle carrier, etc). The idea is not necessarily the gift, just the fun of the exchange.
We hope to see you there. When we first started geocaching, it was all about the excitement of finding that cache and enjoying our time together. Now, the family time is still great, but it is now more about the journey to the cache rather than the cache itself. Part of that journey has been the folks we have met along the way. Many of my close friends are now geocachers, and we enjoy meeting new people as we cache along the way. Hopefully, if our schedules can coincide, we will see you at El Rodeo on the 25th.