Three Months of Fun

Today marks the end of J&B Books' first three months of letterboxing. Man, has it been fun! Plenty of challenges, great views and fun clues. As a quick look back, here are some of B's favorite letterboxes in four different categories. Links for all of these can be found on our "Boxes Found" page, or on LbNA.

DISCLAIMER - This post should not be taken as a slight to any other boxes we've found. These were simply the ones that happened to stick in my head. I'm sure J's list would be totally different.

Series
Mo' Mustangs - J an my first multi-part box. A fun stamp and an easy introduction to multi-part series. A really neat stamp, to boot.
Intrigue at Aiden Lair - One of our most recommended series. The story/clues are fun, but still tricky. All the stamps are quite nice and the park is awesome!
Around the World in 80 Days - The brainchild of SpringChick and Azobox, and my favorite series and letterboxing experience to date. A series huge in both scope and geography, with absolutely wonderful stamps. Dare you to figure out the clues without using the internet! We sure couldn't have ...

Clues
Intrigue at Aiden Lair - As mentioned above, the clues for this series take the form of a fun, yet endearingly odd story. Unlike many story clues, however, this one manages to remain somewhat tricky, rather than turning into straight directions.
Go Blue! - In our home base of Ann Arbor, this was our first box that required a decent amount of on-trail finding to figure out where we needed to be. Also has one of my favorite "you'll know it when you see it" clues, e.g. "Now what in the world is a ... (five steps later) ... Ohhhhhhh!"

Hike
Happy Feet - A nice, long trip along the beach and scrambling up dunes. Gets the best of both the "long and flat" and "scrambling"-type hikes.
Whose Shoes (western)/The Slim Series - This series features some of the longer hikes J and I have done to date. Plenty of elevation change, but mostly just long walks. Azo estimates the total series at 4-5 miles! Yowza!

View
Happy Feet - What can I say. I'm a former competitive swimmer. I'm a sucker for beaches.
Hidden Lake Gardens/Big Rooster - Both of these are located in the same park, and it is gorgeous! Lots of cultivated flowers and arrangements as well as pure nature paths. Do as we say, not as we do. Leave yourself at least a half day for both of these boxes and enjoy the spot. We caught them just before the park closed and have regretted it since ...

Here's hoping for years' more fun!

B

Things To Do In Kalamazoo When You’re Dead

That title doesn’t fit at all, but it sounded catchy to me. :-)

So, our final, final out-of-town boxing trip during our vacation was to Kalamazoo. We started the day with a coffee and stamp exchange with Azobox. We were thrilled to meet him (and to get his stamp, which we had been oohing and aahing in logbooks for awhile!) and sit and talk “shop” for an hour. It was fun and we can’t wait to see him again at the fall gathering.

After starting so well, it is not surprising that our day got a little... let’s say... rocky after that. We decided to do the Whose Shoes mystery boxes. We were pretty sure we had figured out the general starting point for them. And we had. It just took us a bit of driving back and forth (and back and forth, over and over!) to actually spot what we were looking for. Once we found our spot, we merrily set off. The first box was quickly conquered. We set out for the second... and ran into trouble. Apparently, we took a wrong turn and didn’t realize it until it was way too late. As good letterboxers, we should have turned around as soon as we were doubtful. But for some bizarre reason, we did not. In our defense, I can only say that a) we had been letterboxing for 5 days straight and b) the hikes were long and we were tired! Ok, not really good excuses. :-) We realized our mistake and decided to skip that box and move on to the next one. We found it, but by this time it was late afternoon. We were hungry, hot, and tired. Sadly, we decided to throw in the towel. But not to worry, B is already planning a return trip to Kalamazoo in October to finish this series! We won’t give up so easily.... !

Two Non-Vacation Items

One: We took J’s mom out for her first letterboxing trip on Sept. 9th. B carved her a great stamp that she loved and she dubbed herself PostalBag. The three of us found Feeling Antsy in AA and Haicho in Ypsi together, and PostalBag has gone on to find the HH Hostel by herself. Go mom!

Two: During our entire vacation, we kept in touch via cell phones with our pals J&S who were also on a bit of a boxing vacation. We kept calling each other and saying things like “I found my first Easter Egg!” “Really, we found our first hitchhiker!” It was fun, and would’ve sounded completely insane to an outsider. :-)

Day Three of W. Michigan Trip

Ok, we're almost done with this trip. Seems likes writing about it has taken longer than the trip itself!

We started the day in Grand Haven and the Words in the Woods Series. The park was practically deserted (I'm not sure if this was because it was a Tuesday morning or because it really is an "undiscovered jewel" as the clues claim!). SpringChick very helpfully includes a hand-drawn map with the clues, which I strongly suggest downloading and using for this series. The trails are marked by colors, and often intersect at odd angles or where you think a trail shouldn't be.... and there are very few trail signs in the park! So the map was a boon. We spent nearly 4 hours searching for the 7 boxes in the park; but sadly, only found 4. We are pretty sure we were in the correct places for the other 3 and they were no longer there. A little disappointing, but it just gives us something to look forward to the next time we are in the area. (And since we already have the word puzzles figured out for all of them... should be a piece of cake!)

Next, we headed down to Box 12 in the Around the World series. We dawdled over lunch and headed over to the park... only to discover that it was a very public place. Using our best "hey, don't look at me, I'm just nonchalantly looking under these rocks and in all the nooks and crannies of the park" attitude, we searched for the box. And searched. And searched. After about an hour of sneaky looking, we sadly decided that this box was MIA.

Trying to end the day (and trip) on a positive note, we drove to Saugutuck for the last boxes of the day. As we scrambled over the dunes, we heard voices ahead of us. J tried to slow down and let the hikers have a chance to outpace us... but not B! His ears perked up and he said, "I think they are letterboxers!" So he went charging ahead and introduced himself. Thankfully, they were letterboxers (if they weren't, it might have been a little awkward!). So, we met The Sports Nuts and The Wild Woodies. Of course, we stopped and did a massive exchange (I say massive because all the kids had their own books! Whew!) and they kindly let us tag-a-long with them for a bit. So, we found our final two boxes of the trip (The April Fools boxes) with fellow boxers. Pretty neat!

We said good-bye to the Nuts and Woodies and headed back to the truck. We were planning on driving home (it was already after 4 pm). But, we had spent three days along lake Michigan without getting more than our feet wet.... so we decided to do a little swimming. It felt great, and after that, the 2-hour drive home didn't seem quite so bad!

Day Two of the W. Michigan trip...

... as told through pictures! We only took a few pics the entire trip, and as Lake Michigan was beautiful when we visited, most of them were here! For the record, we started the day in White Hall and the Fill 'er Up series, drove to Muskegon State Park for Happy Feet and Block House, and ended in Norton Shores with the Ogre and Three Princesses.

B on the beach as we set out for Happy Feet.



J resting on a dune during the Happy Feet walk. What a view!



Block House at, you guessed it, the Block House letterbox.



A spiderweb during the uphill struggle--I mean, return-- of Block House. :-)



We stayed the night in Grand Haven (ohhh.... what a deal we got on our hotel! Traveling after Labor Day is good for your checkbook!), ate dinner at a nice pub downtown, contemplated swimming in the hotel pool... and once again, fell asleep as soon our heads hit the pillows!

Day One of the W. Michigan Trip (slightly belatedly)

We started our trip on Sunday, Sept. 4th, leaving Ann Arbor at 7:00 a.m.; amazing, considering we were on vacation! Our first stop (not counting Around the World boxes) was the Linus C. Palmer park in Wyoming, for Dragon Fyre and the Dragon’s Lair. The stamps were beautifully carved and a real treat to find. We had an interesting time in the park. It was Sunday morning, and a local church was singing hymns under the picnic pavilion. We had a little soundtrack accompanying our ‘boxing! Also, although we really liked the park, it had a -- shall we say -- interesting smell. There were times on our walk when wafts of what can only be described as a raw sewage-type smell almost overpowered us! I am not sure if there is a treatment facility near by or what (we had a similar occurrence in AA with a sewage plant) but WOW! We won’t forget that smell anytime soon! :-)

Our next stop was The Fate of Easter Series, also in Wyoming. We really enjoyed the story and stamps on this one. The park was small, but we got a work out scrambling back and forth between boxes! We were also thankful that we found the entire series, given that the marker on the first box had been turned towards the dirt (B discovered it) and the last box was sitting out in the open. We fixed both for the next ‘boxers who come through. J adored the Bad Bunny stamp -- he is too cute!

Our day ended with Celtic Series, Part II in Ada. The stamps were beautiful. The walk was... well... let’s just say that we may have missed the “little used path” in the first clue multiple times. We may have trekked up and up and up a giant hill that we had no business going up. We may have been close to the point of giving up (or swearing under our breaths) when B noticed a track that was barely visible and decided to explore it. Thank goodness he did! Finding the boxes after that was a breeze.

And that pretty much wrapped up day one! We spent the night in Grand Rapids. J fell asleep while watching the US Open, which goes to show how tired she was (those hills in Seidman Park were tough!) since she is an avid tennis fan. Given the number of boxes in these series, plus a few others I am not listing, it is not surprising!

(Side note: It is a shame we can’t really talk about Mystery boxes. B and I had quite an experience on one the Around the World boxes that day! Let’s just say that it was a comedy of errors, interspersed with flashes of brilliance on both of our parts that finally got us where we were supposed to be!)

And then it was on to Day Two...

Updates soon

We have been bad little bloggers this week! We have spent so much time on the trail that we have barely had a chance to email people with updates on their boxes, let alone write anything meaningful about our "week of letterboxing." Now that we have settled back into normal mode (and back to work on Monday -- eek!) we will sit down soon and try to do justice to all the fun we have had this past week.

Until then, take a look at Wisconsin Hiker's list of boxes she did in Portland. I am so jealous; they look great! Sounds like they had did some wonderful hikes and boxes... something for B and me to consider for future trips!

Whew! (Semi-) Ready to Go ...

Wow, I sit watching 41 pages worth of directions and letterboxing clues print out. Impressive. Or foolhardy. Not sure which. In any case, we are leaving for our three-day western sweep tomorrow! J and I just spent about an hour choosing boxes and destinations (well, not quite in that order), and are considering actually packing. I'm guessing that hotel internet access is going to be limited with no laptop, so we'll be updating when we return.

The locations for this trip are: Grand Rapids area, Muskegeon area, Grand Haven and Holland/Saugatuck. Should be cool! Our other planned vacation venture is to the land of Azo. J&B take on Kalamazoo later on this coming week. Details to come ...

Day One, of the non-Eastern letterboxing trip

Our week off of work and dedicated (mostly) to letterboxing started off great. Left AA at 8:00am (amazing how a hobby will drag you out of bed on your vacation!) and were at the Michigan Hitchhiker Hostel by 9:00. It was a nice, hilly walk (where we ran into a dog walker stridently calling for his non-visible dogs to no avail. A few minutes later one came galloping down the trail and looked at us, slightly puzzled. We kindly directed him to his owner.) and found the box without a problem. We didn't have our own HH to exchange with those in the box, so we decided that these stamps didn't actually count as "real" HHs; which, since we had never found one, seemed fair but hard on ourselves.

Our next box was "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" at Bald Mountain. While we were on the trail, we ran into ISpy... our first on the trail encounter with another letterboxer! Unfortunately, we didn't think to do an exchange with her. We found the box (the stamp is great) and then had a laugh -- there was a HH inside! So we did get a "real" HH today, after all! It is the "Feeling Sluggish" HH which has been around since 2003. We are going to replant it somewhere later this week. We also chuckled over the last place the HH had been, which was the "Motown Wonder" box, carved for the 2005 summer GL gathering... and the place where "Ain't No Mountain" made its debut. Very zen-y stamp experiences today! :-)

Our third box was a bust. We couldn't find it. We are 99.9% sure we were in the right place, but we'll be sending an email to the owner of the "Friend in the Mountain" box to check on the story.

We were very happy with the boxing, weather, and stamps (especially the HHs) today... a great way to start our vacation!

Our Button

.... is now featured in our sidebar. J created it, after spending many hours reading crocheting blogs (which is another story in itself) and becoming obsessed with the cute buttons those crafters make for everything! The idea is that instead of just putting a boring old link on your page, you can put a snazzy button that will link instead! (Assuming anybody actually reads our blog... probably a big assumption!).

So, you all are welcome to snap up our button and put it on your sites, blogs, whatever. If you need help figuring out the code for linking, let me know; it is very simple. Also, please don't steal bandwidth! If you are not sure what this means, read this. Photobucket.com is a great free hosting site to avoid bandwidth theft.

I think it would be very cool if all letterboxers created little buttons like ours. We would all be so cross-linked and cute, it would be almost too much. Just take a look at these!