Saturday in the park

Wow! Only the second time we have been out this year! (In our defense, we have been really busy with buying a house... we move in two weeks. Horray!) But we chose a great day to do a little local boxing; not a cloud in the sky and just beautiful. We picked up these boxes. Since we were in Gallup Park, we ended up cutting our letterboxing short and renting a canoe instead. We paddled along the Huron for about an hour... we both ended up sunburned, but it was a great way to finish the day!

Hopefully, we can get out again soonish for some more boxing. We'll have to celebrate owning our first home; maybe with a box? ;-)

The first of 2008

J&B got a bit of a late start to letterboxing this year, but we finally managed to get out today with PostalBag. We found TrailTroll's clever series, Holly, Hailey, Holey, in Holly. The puzzles were fun and the stamps very cute. We did have a bit of a rough time finding the Holly box, because we misunderstood where the starting point was located. But once we figured it out (after about an hour of wandering in the wrong spot!) we found it without a problem. It was breezy and cool; a very nice way to start the season!

Ouch!

Why ouch, you may ask? Well, after not boxing for the entire summer, J and B made up for it - big time. We spent Saturday at Yankee Springs Recreation Area in Middleville... and hiked 16 miles for our finds! And given that the terrain is often very hilly, we were whipped at the end of the day! So much so that we were too tired to try for a few more boxes in the park. They will have to wait for another day.

But the ones we found were great! The Amazing Series, Fractured Fairy Tales, and the last 4 boxes of the Pumpkin Patch Kid series (read about why we only had the first five, here) (and see our list of hits and misses here) were all beautiful stamps on great trails. It was a perfect autumn day and we really enjoyed our day back on the trail.

Especially when we were home again and resting our tired legs!

Back

Wow! J&BBooks have not been letterboxing in over 2 months! A sad state of affairs, but we have had a very busy summer. However, we are planning on ending the dry spell with a letterboxing trip this weekend to Middleville, Michigan to find the rest of the boxes we didn't get after the 2005 Get A Clue! Gathering. We are soooo looking forward to it.

And speaking of gatherings, we are attending the It's A Wing Thing gathering in October (we don't belong to Atlas Quest so can't officially RSVP, but have checked in several times to see who has... lots of old friends!) . Azobox and SpringChick very kindly spread the box-carving wealth with us, so B whipped up two awesome boxes. The new format sounds like a great idea (since we may have ~ once ~ held up everybody's lunch while on the trail at a gathering) and are very much looking forward to an autumn day of letterboxing and catching up with everybody!

Happy 3rd of July!

J and B celebrated their time off for Independence Day with a brief letterboxing trip to Kensington Metro Park on Tuesday. We only found two boxes; the black flies were terrible and B had already worked half the day. We will be back some other time to pick up the rest. As usual, PennyPenny's stamp was gorgeous (I so envy her carving skills!) and Flotilla's box featured both a container and stamp that were a "punchline" that fit the clues perfectly. I laughed out loud when we found it! We were hiking in the Nature Study Area, so we were thrilled to see two deer on our walk (along with various chipmunks, squirrels, and birds). If we hadn't been attacked by flies, it would have been perfect. :-)

F300

It’s true! J and B hit the 300 mark on Sunday with their find of You’re A Star in Fenton. Though not a huge milestone (like F500) it is still pretty big and we’re pretty amazed by it. We flipped through our logbook to commemorate and discovered that, despite finding 300 boxes in the 2 years we have been letterboxing, we remember finding every single one (and that encompasses the good, the bad, and the ugly on some of those finds!).

As mentioned above, we were letterboxing with PostalBag (aka as J’s mom) on Sunday in Holly and Fenton. We found TrailTroll’s new series in Seven Lakes State Park; the stamps were lovely! And the park was a treat, too. Despite all those lakes, I think it is a “no wake” park so the boats were quiet and there weren’t a lot of people out. It made for a very peaceful hike. We found the boxes without incident... except when PostalBag, while playing with her video camera, almost fell down a steep slope into the water! Luckily a tree broke her fall... and we devised a new rule for her after that... no letterboxing while recording!

What a Face! - Midwest Reprise (finally) planted

Yes! The 7 box/20 stamp series has been planted! See LBNA or click here for clues. We had fun planting it... it was boiling hot and humid for the first two hours and then thunderstorming for the last hour. Oh well, Michigan summer weather, I guess. :-) I hope everybody enjoys the series!