Unable to create virtual hosts with Apache 2.4

I am trying to configure multiple virtual hosts on a new Ubuntu 13.10 installation as a development server. It only needs to serve to itself. Apache Server version: Apache/2.4.6 (Ubuntu)

I've read http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/vhosts/name-based.html https://help.ubuntu.com/13.04/serverguide/httpd.html and many other sites trying to figure this out.

http://localhost is working but http://ncacaa.local is NOT FOUND. What am I missing??? ping http://nacaa.local returns ping: unknown host http://ncacaa.local

Here is the content of the /etc/apache2/sites-available/ncacaa.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
    DocumentRoot "/var/www/vhosts/htdocs-ncacaa"
    ServerName ncacaa.local
    ErrorLog "/var/log/apache2/ncacaa.localhost-error.log"
    <Directory "/var/www/vhosts/htdocs-ncacaa">
       Order allow,deny
       Allow from all
       Require all granted
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

There is a symbolic link to it in the sites-enabled directory created by a2ensite

Here is what is not commented out in the 000-default.conf file:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin john@***.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www
    <Directory "/var/www">
            AllowOverride FileInfo
            Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
            Order allow,deny
            Allow from all
            Require all granted
    </Directory>
    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Here is what is not commented out in the apache.conf file:

Timeout 300
KeepAlive On
MaxKeepAliveRequests 100
KeepAliveTimeout 5
User ${APACHE_RUN_USER}
Group ${APACHE_RUN_GROUP}
HostnameLookups Off
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
LogLevel warn
LogLevel warn
<Directory />
    Options FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Require all denied
</Directory>
<Directory /usr/share>
    AllowOverride None
    Require all granted
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/>
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride None
    Require all granted
</Directory>
AccessFileName .htaccess
<FilesMatch "^\.ht">
    Require all denied
</FilesMatch>
LogFormat "%v:%p %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %O \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" vhost_combined
LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %O \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" combined
LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %O" common
LogFormat "%{Referer}i -> %U" referer
LogFormat "%{User-agent}i" agent
IncludeOptional conf-enabled/*.conf
IncludeOptional sites-enabled/*
ServerName localhost:80

Thanks in advance!