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HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL!

The volunteers, chapter reps, and the executive board would like to wish you all, ncluding all geocachers, parents of geocachers, sisters, brothers, lackeys, grandparents (i.e. light121, medicrncen, lansearch & more) and even muggles 🙂  a HAPPY THANKSGIVING! 

These past 20 months as president, have been a great learning experience. We’ve tackled challenges, shared excitement & optimism, and spent many hours collaborating to secure the future of and spread enthusiasm for the WSGA. My goals when I took office include taking this organization back to its roots and then some. I wanted to make it all inclusive, empower our member volunteers to moments with geocachers far and wide. All while keeping our missions to educate parks & land managers  to the benefit of geocachers, encourage environmental stewardship through CITOs and trail maintenance, increase awareness and support  geocaching to all through events and social  interaction.

Today, I am extremely thankful to all of those individuals within this organization and some outside the membership, who have allowed me to be as successful and determined for the WSGA. I’d like to thank the following volunteers who have supported us through the past almost two dozen months.

  • cacheingcants (Carter, Mom, Dad & Brother) – MWCats (aka Mc3Cats) – BryanBeFinding – Obarshay – AnnScout – DiscgolfBirdie – Nepokama – ThePiCacher – SkyHawker – Mrs. Winos – Half_Pint – LindaHuskey – WillDoit – Gopher-it – JazznCatz – Team Pazooter – ibking1 – Terrible T’s – AndrewRJ – Avroair – Princess Trouble – Paisleykmt – ChrisoftheNW – Wasurf – Martin5 – VBHunter – PNW_Navigator & Carrots – PeachofWa – CoolCowCachers – SMuddT – lucymogus – AndrewsDK – Tecsomane – Morhoff – SeabeckTribe – HawaiianMaile – rocketglider – Mr. Gadget #2 – Clongo_Rongo – LovOrca – Clever_Cachers – Brian – Seth! – JCar – MtnGoat50 – Merlin1392 – Boomer425 – Prying Pandora – Ambrosia – ConfusedZombie – Spewey – gearguru – BrooceLee (& Nikki) – the tc life – and many more if I missed you. These are all the volunteers who have stepped up in some particular role as committee members (Events, Campout, Update, Merchandise, Tech, APE, Parks, Outreach…), Chapter Reps, the executive board, and consultants.

I want to thank every one of you. I genuinely appreciate all that you have done and continue to do. Happy thanksgiving to you and your families. And HAPPY THANKSGIVING to all geocachers in our great State of Washington and world-wide.

Have a great day, find some caches, and be kind to one-and-other. Cheers

Winos_Seattle aka Antoine

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TONIGHT’s Rescheduled WSGA BoD Meeting — JOIN US on ZOOM

This is an open invite to this rescheduled WSGA Board Meeting for November 2024. Due to the PNW Bomb Cyclone that wiped out much of the electrical and cable infrastructure in western Washington, this meeting was postponed last week to tonight. Here is the ZOOM LINK for anyone who’d like to join us.

 

CLICK BELOW

ZOOM LINK TO WSGA NOVEMBER 2024 BOARD MEETING 

or Copy this:

https://zoom.us/j/91678797182?pwd=bWXa6xIO3wjowhlbNsn2uvmooXul9X.1

UPDATED AGENDA 11/25/2024

WSGA PRES. AGENDA NOV 2024 – USE DAY OF

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EXTREME WEATHER: PNW – Bomb Cyclones

What is a Bomb Cyclone??? A “bomb cyclone” slammed the Pacific Northwest earlier this week, knocking out power to hundreds of thousands in Washington state, killing two people and injuring two others. A bomb cyclone is akin to a winter hurricane, with wind gusts of up to 70 mph, and it brings a slew of dangers. Washington State took the brunt of this last bomb cyclone on Tuesday night. Power went out in the Issaquah, Bellevue, Sammamish, Fall City, Maple Valley area. Issaquah suffered the extensive damage with over 100 fallen trees on homes, cars and across streets. Powerlines, cell towers, and repeaters were wiped out. Cars and homes crushed by heavy tree limbs and entire trees. As of Thursday 11am, the Eastern King County area had 400,000 without power.

As I type this, I’m sitting in the Issaquah Senior Center which is currently operating as a “Warm & Charging Shelter” for impacted residents. We’ve got no power, no data / wi-fi and very unstable cell service. We resorted to setting up our camping stove to make coffee in the morning, fried eggs, soups and simple dinner. Thank god we’re geocachers!! I’m sure we’re not alone as this area has many geocachers living nearby. I’m going to try to update this website as often as I can, but not having data service makes that very difficult. Please follow us on Facebook and our Discord Server. Those links will be listed below. I’m also adding links to the National Weather Service, PSE’s Restoration webpage and Washington Weather Chasers out of Lake Stevens. If you need anything, please send an email at president@wsgaonline.org or text me.

If you have updates or photos and want to post them Please email them to Linda Huskey, WSGA Social Media at socialmedia@wsgaonline.org. — Otherwise, post a comment on any of our social media platforms.

 

WSGA DISCORD SERVER (Best LIVE Communications)

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE

WASHINGTON WEATHER CHASERS (Facebook)

CACHERS OF PUGET SOUND (Facebook)

CITY OF ISSAQUAH (Facebook)

KING5 Weather / KOMO Weather

Official WSGA FACEBOOK PAGE

 

 

 

 

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Halloween Extravaganza 2024 Hosted by Goblindust and Bounce, Bounce

If you haven’t heard of this event and Facebook is not your thing, please consider dropping in.

This is an absolute HALLOWEEN MUST for any geocacher, parents of geocachers or children looking for something fun and inclusive within our community. You can bet that Goblingdust and Bounce, Bounce have been working hard to make this already thrilling event (GCAWC4P) for everyone.
Please, come one, come all!
Saturday, October 26th, from 12 PM to 8 PM
CLICK BELOW ON THE GC CODE TO SEE THE EVENT
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SAVE THE DATE: ALL INVITED – WSGA SEPTEMBER BOARD MEETING 9/18/2024 @ 6:30PM

Ahhhh, September….The time of year when the kids go back to school, if you live on the east coast, the leaves start to fall, close-out sales are running wild…online, and it’s the return of the WSGA online board meetings. All are welcome to join us during these board meetings. The meetings are held through the ZOOM app and the meeting links will be available right here on the WSGA Website. Contact us if you’d like to have it emailed to you. Here’s the agenda for this month’s WSGA Board Meeting.

Click to access WSGA-PRES.-AGENDA-SEPT-2024-Detailed-USE-02.pdf

WSGA PRES. AGENDA SEPT 2024 (DETAILED)

WSGA Sept. 2024 Board Mtg Zoom Link Invite: CLICK HERE

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Picasso…Van Gogh…Bansky…Where are you?!?!?

Calling all artists! The WSGA is seeking a new coin design. Submit your art/drawing/sketch in PDF format by SEPT 13, 2024 to contest@wsgaonline.org . The submissions will be reviewed by the executive committee, and the winning artist will receive their winning designed coin in all colors/versions. Winners must be WSGA member in good standing. If you can’t put the design in PDF format, simply take a picture and send it in.

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INTERNATIONAL GEOCACHING DAY & MORE…..

As vast and spread out as the State of Washington happens to be, it’s rare to have the entire area covered with fun and lively geocaching events on those specific days that matter. Those days that offer geocachers a unique opportunity to earn points or virtual souvenirs and spend a little time with friends and folks they haven’t seen in ages or just happen to meet that day. Maybe share stories, exchange trackables, hop into each others geomobiles and hunt down the next FTF.

I’m very happy to announce that on this upcoming International Geocaching Day, you will be able to find a Souvenir awarded event all over the State of Washington. To see all the events hosted by all types of geocachers whether they’re members or not, chapter reps or executive board members, please click here:

UPCOMING EVENTS

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WEBSITE ANNOUNCEMENT

New WSGA Website updates have been made. We have added a drop-down menu for all things “Let’s Go Geocaching”, which might be subject to have a name change.

Inside this menu, you will find some new content. Including “Education Tools” featuring an available Intro to Geocaching slides show and it’s accompanied YouTube video of the events. We have added a “Geocaching Tools” menu featuring websites used to help you solve puzzles. These options are quite numbered and it is our goal to reduce the amount we have gathered. We are currently in the process of adding two menu items called “Friends of the WSGA” and “Geo-orgs”. These will have local and state organizations that we have worked well with and geo-orgs from outside the State of Washington. Please remember that some of these menu items may be subject to change based on redundancies, over-crowding, and usefulness.

We hope you enjoy these new features. More updates coming. Have a cool 97 degree day.

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WSGA JULY 2024 LIVE PUBLIC BOARD MEETING & Campout Weekend

WSGA JULY 2024 LIVE PUBLIC BOARD MEETING & Campout Weekend

The WSGA Board of Directors will be hosting a “LIVE” public WSGA Board Meeting on July 27th, 2024 at the Campout event in Benton City. You all are invited to attend. Come join us for all the Campout weekend activities, including a Friday night Adventure Lab Night cache event, a poker run and Adventure Lab run on Saturday, a grill-out in the park and much more. Our board meeting agenda is shown below. There will be a chance for all to ask questions before and after the meeting and see how this organization functions behind the scenes. Our board meeting agenda is shown below.
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Full Screenshot of agenda shown below if this link fails to work for you.
ALL are invited. Members, Non-members, kids, dads, moms, avid geocachers, beginners, everyone is welcome. Check out these cache pages:
Friday to Sunday Morning: “WSGA 2024 Summer Campout @ Horn Rapids Park
TO JOIN THE WSGA FAMILY and SUPPORT A GREAT CAUSE FOR ALL GEOCACHERS, PLEASE CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW.
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2024-2025 WSGA Board

The Election Committee would like to present the 2024-2025 WSGA Board:

President – Antoine Pin (Winos_Seattle)
Vice-President – Steve Thurin (SMuddT)
Secretary – Dano Rystrom (fairwoodwest)
Treasurer – Annette Bailes (PeachofWA)
48 North Chapter Representative – Jean Hoffmann (Morhoff)
Cache-Cadian Chapter Representative – Gene Reed (Mr. Gadget #2)
Inland Empire Chapter Representative – Elaine Edwards (lucymogus)
Puget Sound Chapter Representative – Jim Pommert (rocketglider)
Olympic Peninsula Chapter Representative – Lori Cassidy (SeabeckTribe)
South Central Chapter Representative – Benjamin Parruzot (Tecsomane)
Southwest Chapter Representative – Rhonda Britten (RMMB1972)

Thank you to everyone that ran for a board position especially, Larry Noll (LLCOOL), Kevin Witt (Trek 450), and Kevin Defields (coolcowcachers).