You’ve maybe heard of geocaching, where you use a GPS device to plunge into the woods and find things.
Letterboxing is the low tech equivalent; instead of entering coordinates into your GPS unit, you follow written instructions (walk .1 mile with the lake on your left, turn right at the huge boulder, count 90 steps from the park bench) until you find your “treasure”. Hidden will be a watertight container with a notebook, rubber stamp, stamp pad and pen. You carry your own rubber stamp and notebook. When you find the spot, you use the hidden stamp to mark your notebook, and your stamp to mark the cached log.
I read about letterboxing ages ago on Scribbletown, and filed it away as a potentially fun outdoor activity. So yesterday, when the sun came out and the temperature climbed up above freezing, the girlie and I headed out.
There were two letterboxes stashed in a local park; we tried the first, but it began with a trek up a steep icy hill, so we backtracked. The second was easy walking, but I did all the clue finding as Mir was more interested in picking up sticks and talking to the non-scary dogs. She did like stamping the book and signing her name, but I think the charm of the enterprise was a little lost on her – it’ll be more fun when she’s a bit older.
Still, it was nice to get out into the sunshine and remember that spring really is going to be here one day.
09 February 2009
Letterboxing in Sunshine
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14 comments:
There's a book, filled with lots of things like this, published in '79, called "Water in the Lake" by Kenneth Maue
Check it out.
T.
I love this! A friend introduced me to letterboxing over a year ago and now we have this nerdy little letterboxing kit that we carry around with us on our family adventures! So fun!
We've done geocaching when we're in the mountains-now there's an even tougher one called terracaching. Yeah, I don't think so.
It sounds like a good day.
Yes, when she's older she'll probably get more out of it. Dusty loves it and we can't wait to do it again when it warms up. We were just talking about that on Saturday as a matter of fact. The last one we did had 10 stamps and all were waterlogged. We still got to use the stamps on her book but not on the owner's very wet book. A shame.
i hadn't heard of letterboxing, but it looks like it would be huge fun for kids! both my nephews would probably enjoy it.
Sounds lovely, as well as delightfully low-tech.
I have never heard of this...sounds like so much fun. And what a day you had yesterday!
That sounds like fun...kind of like a scavenger hunt!
I love scavenger hunts! I want to do this.
That sounds very cool!
This is something I want to do more of, too. Maybe over the summer we can meet somewhere in the middle.
You will love this, and so will your daughter. Our family does this everywhere we go. OK, we're not psycho about it or anything, but whenever we leave town, we see if we can catch a couple at the destination or on the way. We try to do it in town, too, but it is less and less frequent with our schedules. Our girls (4 and 7 now--2 and 5 when we began) love it. And we see so many places we would have never dreamed of going without the clues--even in our own neighborhood!
Enjoy it!
i keep meaning to go letterboxing. I bet MQ is the perfect age for us.. and the weather is getting nice. nows the time!
So fun! I've done letterboxing with my son and geocaching with my husband. They're both great fun. What a nice day!
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