The Big Day

October 22nd. Finally! Being perpetually early people, we arrived at Yankee Springs before the park even opened. And then had to wait 15 minutes until the ranger came and unlocked the gates! Once inside the park, we were greeted by some gorgeous fall colors:

Once we had found the Shelter and met up with Azobox again, we made our first (of many) new friends of the day. We met the Doglvrs crew and promptly started talking "shop" about their Ok Corral series from the day before. (Good planning on our part!) We spent the next two hours getting our first two event stamps, the wonderful traveling event stamps (The Munsters, which were incredible!), The Blue Dog, shivering a bit, and making exchanges with everybody we could find! We were lucky enough to exchange with: Doglvrs, Grandvilla, Mobiusklein, SpringChick, OldShoe, TrailTroll, TJ_Mich and the Nickerboxer, Nerdyfish and Diamondfish (and met their cute puppy in the sweater!), the Cerearlcityboxers, Stampin' Pam, Munchkin Stamper, Scooterlady, and the 1-Cent Stamper (also known as the Four Clovers). Dang! A funny story that occurred during the crazy exchanges: We were asked if we had ready any good books lately. B started reeling off an exhaustive list of our recent reads. After a few minutes of polite listening, the questioner asked again, have you read any good books lately? A light went on for J, who figured out that this WAS A CLUE! For a very lovely stamp, that is one of our faves from the day!

After having met and exchanged with nearly everybody in the shelter, we set out for the first "real" boxing of the day. We decided to tackle the Pumpkin' Patch Kids with the Doglvrs. Yes, there were 9 boxes in the series, and we only had about 2 hours before lunch/clue exchange game. Yes, we knew it was a SpringChick series, so there probably would be a lot of walking. Yes, we were insane to try! Sadly, we only managed to get 5 of the 9 before realizing that it was time to head back. They were really cute, though, and it was fun to walk on the LONGEST BOARDWALK IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND while on the trail. Ok, it may not be the longest ever. But it was still really long. Here is B taking a break at one of the boxes along with Mrs. Doglvrs and kids:

After we finally got back to our belated lunch, it was time to figure out who killed Mother Goose! This was such a fun game; thanks to SpringChick for organizing it! The stamps that everybody carved were excellent. Our only regret was that we were stamping so quickly, in order to find the suspect, weapon, and location, that some of our images came out a little smudged or too light. Well, our second regret was that we didn't win, I guess! Here's a quick snapshot from the game, which I think captures the "quick, everybody run around and get as many stamps as you can" feeling of it!

After the excitement of the game (and of getting and passing along our first cootie...) and the intelligent discussions from the forum, it was time to hit the trail again. First, though, we picked up the beautifully carved Jack PumpkinHead box that was near the shelter. Then we headed out for the cranky Things at Yankee Springs series. We really enjoyed all 5 of these boxes, and were excited that we were first finds on all of them. The entire time we were on the trail (about 2.5 hours) we only saw 2 other people. There is something to be said for letterboxing in the fall! Just look at the colors behind J!

Finally, we decided to start the long drive back to AA. It was a wonderful day, where we met a lot of really fun, nice people. We picked up some great stamps. We were definitely glad we came.

One last little story. On the way home, we stopped for dinner. Once again, J asked for a baked potato (remember, she ordered one the night before and couldn't get one, because the restaurant was out). Dinner came out ~ but no potato! The waiter said they were having problems with their potatoes... but after waiting for about 20 minutes, it finally came. The elusive, hard to find, Michigan baked potato was conquered!

The Day Before The Big Day

We spent last Friday, the day before the Get A Clue! Gathering, in the Grand Rapids area doing a little “pre-event” ‘boxing. We decided the Ok Corral series would be a good warm up (and as B pointed out, it was a “masculine” series, which are a bit rare in the letterboxing world!). We found Aman park without a problem and set off for Box #1. It was a gorgeous autumn day, and though we were a bit chilly at first, we quickly warmed up climbing up and down the largish hills in the park. Box #1 was found pretty quickly and we set off for Box #2. As we were walking down the trail, we passed an older gentleman with a few sheets of paper in his hand and a backpack -- a sure sign of another letterboxer! But being the shy people we are, we didn’t say anything. However, when we passed him again about five minutes later, he asked us if we were boxers. We ‘fessed up and we stopped to chat for a bit. This was his 4th time out to find the boxes in this series, which sent us into a panic. Were the rest really that difficult? Had we stumbled upon the first by sheer luck? Our mystery boxer (we never did get his name, though we think his stamp was a lighthouse) kindly offered us a hint for Box #2, concerning the pine trees, and then went on his merry way. Hmmm... pine trees.... (Editorial note: getting hints for boxes is never a good thing. It usually just causes more trouble than it is worth. Don’t believe me? See J&BBooks’ ensuing problems!) we were pretty sure we were on the right trail... and there were pine trees and an open area with prairie grass right there... so we looked... and looked... and looked for that darn #2... all to no avail. Finally, after much frustrating scrambling in the brush, we decided to skip it and head on to Box #3. After a bit of a walk, we found it without a problem (and loved the stamp, as this cowboy was our fave from the movie!). We moved on to Box #4. I admit, there was some confusion over which trail to take at the 4-way trail intersection, but after a bit of trial and error, we found the correct trail, the correct series of stumps, and finally the correct hiding spot. Now the question remained: Should we head back and look for #2? Or call it a day? We decided to follow the trail back to the parking lot and look at the map. We did... and inspiration descended. Without giving anything away, let’s just say that “pine trees” was a helpful hint... if you had looked at the map first! :-) We hightailed it back onto the trails and successfully found #2.

Whew! By the time we got back to the truck, it was 5:30. Our plans to pick up a few of Grandvilla’s or Mobiusklein’s in the area would have to wait. Except that we noticed that Make A Wish was just a few miles away... so we zipped over and practically ran through the trails at Johnson Park, because it was getting dark and we were getting hungry! We found this very cute stamp without a hitch.

The only thing left to do before the big day was to find a hotel and eat dinner, both of which were accomplished in short order. The funny thing at dinner was that J ordered a baked potato and was informed that the restaurant was out of potatoes! Seems an odd thing to run out of, especially as you can run out to the grocery store to get more!

Tomorrow: The Get A Clue! Gathering... complete with pictures!

Just 3 days until "Get A Clue!"

As you can expect, we are very excited... and a little nervous! This is our first gathering so we will be meeting loads of new people for the first time. And since neither B or J is particularly good with strangers... well, it should be fun! ;-) It will be interesting to put faces to the names we have run across on our 'boxing travels. And we are both looking forward to the Clue game. And all the exchanges!

We have decided that since the gathering is about two hours from our home (and we do NOT want to get up insanely early on Saturday!) we will make a semi-long weekend of it. So, we are taking half days off of work on Friday, driving out, doing a little boxing in the Grand Rapids/Grandville area, and then crashing at a hotel. Perfect timing, too, as both of us have been itching for some time off work and to do a little letterboxing.

A full report about the weekend will be made, of course! Until then...

Whose Shoes (western) -- conquered!

What can I say? Slim's Saddle and Saddlebags were a breeze this time around. We had anticipated the worst. After our last venture into K-zoo (where we were essentially horrible boxers and spent hours wandering around the park in vain) we budgeted 6 hours for last Saturday's trip. And found these two boxes in less than an hour! And were highly embarrassed to note how far away from the actual boxes we had got last time. Oh well. We learned something important from all this; as much as we would like to letterbox for a week straight in 85 degree weather and lots of mosquitoes... it clearly affects our boxing ability! Duly noted. :-)

While in Kalamazoo, we also picked up a few other boxes. Home in the Pines by Azobox was fun, as were La Obas and Kalarea. While looking for Home in the Pines, at 8:45 in the morning, we disturbed hundreds of roosting birds who were not very happy with us! We also found our first box by Lucky Charms, Trees, Water, Sand. J loved the stamp for this one! Our luckiest find of the day was KazooDog's Al Sabo Land Preserve. I say lucky because we had resorted to scrounging around any oaks that fit the description in the clues. J was pretty proud of herself when she stumbled across the box! Also, we felt pretty lucky to have found it at all, as the box was cracked, had numerous critter teeth marks on it, and the logbook was soaked. Yikes! We tried to dry it out as much as possible and rewrapped the contents in a new Ziploc freezer bag. We sent an email to KazooDog (of course), as well. The stamp was very cute though and we were happy to have it in our book.

All in all, it was a great day for us. We found every box we looked for, conquered Whose Shoes, enjoyed beautiful weather, and were back in Ann Arbor by 3:00!

Now we just need to carve our stamps for the Clue stamp game at the upcoming gather...