Mackinac area adventures

Some highlights of our recent Mackinac/Upper Western Michigan trip... a full list of our finds (and misses) can be found here.

Thursday: Stopped and “Did the Wave” on northbound I-75. J waved at the cars and they waved back! Very fun and a great “drive by” box that lets you stretch your legs before the bridge. While at this rest stop, we actually ran into B’s coworker who was also driving up to the conference, without any planning on our parts. Must be a popular stop. :-)

Friday: We had spent the night in St. Ignace (which was hosting its classic car show this weekend. Neither J or B is really into cars, but it was neat to drive through town and see hundreds of beautiful old cars.) so we started the day looking for Under the Northern Lights and St. Iggy, neither of which we found. They were both in very public places, so we weren’t surprised that we couldn’t find them (though disappointed). We did find Mighty Mac, though. Great stamp and location! Here is B enjoying the view:

And here we are enjoying our stay at the Grand Hotel on Friday afternoon:

Saturday: After B’s conference ended, we hit the local letterboxes! Letterboxing on Mackinac is a great way to see the island “hotspots” but with a purpose. Many of the most popular areas have boxes nearby, so you can walk to Arch Rock and take in the view, as well as get a letterbox. So we spent the afternoon walking along the Bluffs, to Arch Rock, to a cemetery, to a cave, along the boardwalk, to the library, and to the Devil’s Kitchen. The bulk of the boxes we found were by Radio and we really enjoyed his/her (?) clues and stamps. Here is B enjoying one of the many flower-lined trails on the island:

We wrapped up Saturday by leaving the island and driving down to Traverse City. As we still had several hours of daylight left and are obsessive ‘boxers, we decided to get the Wine Country I mystery box. There was a slight mix-up on our part regarding the clues (we may have been accidentally following the Wine Country II clues... maybe) but we figured it out and found the box. We stopped at the The Bowers (which used to be the servant quarters and is the ‘less expensive’ sister of the Bowers Harbor Inn) for dinner. J decided to honor the Wine Country box by having a local wine; she tried the Pinot Noir by Peninsula Cellars. It smelled funny but she drank it!

Sunday: We spent most of Sunday finding SpringChick mystery boxes, so I won’t go into a lot of detail. We did stop to look for the Fishtown box in Leland, but couldn’t find it. It may still be there, but the area was so public that we couldn’t really root around for it. We enjoyed visiting Fishtown, though, and eating cheese curds! Here is just one of the many lovely views we saw during the day of boxing along Lake Michigan:

And a little update on the She Flies box. SC has a note on her site that there is a No Trespassing sign near the box. We were in the area so we decided to check it out; if the sign clearly limited access to the box we would just skip it. However, it really doesn’t. It is at a nearby farmer’s field but not in the same direction as the box... so we felt comfortable retrieving it. And were First Finders on it! :-) Also, there was an entire flock of wild turkeys gobbling away nearby, which was fun.

All in all, it was a great trip. We found a lot of boxes (we are well over 200 now) and though we had a few misses, it was worth it. The only frustrating thing is that there were so many in the area that we had to skip! Oh well, there is always next year’s conference....

South Bend Mystery boxes... pictures

Oops! J forgot that she did take the camera with her on our latest outing. So, here is B and our friends J&S in one of South Bend's many lovely parks:

And here is a fire hydrant that J thought was awesome. All of South Bend's hydrants were painted like little guys; very cute! Or it may just be that J is easily amused!

Two other boxing items. One, we removed our two May Days boxes from Maybury State Park, so the whole series is gone now. We will be replanting at least one of these stamps as a permanent box, though, sometime soon. Two is that we are taking a little letterboxing vacation next weekend to Mackinac Island (well, sorta vacation.... B has to attend a conference... J doesn't, though!). We are planning on boxing on the way up, while there, and back down to AA. Any suggestions of what to hit?

South Bend Mystery boxes

We spent the weekend visiting friends in South Bend, IN (home of, among other things, this famous image). Luckily, these friends letterbox, too, so we headed out for the South Bend History/Mystery Tour.

We found Domers (box #3) without a hitch and the stamp was just beautiful! Very well-carved. Our search for Leep Frog (#1) was less successful. In fact, after the four of us searched for nearly an hour, we came to the conclusion that either the box was missing or we were so off base in our search that it was impossible to find. Our big problem with this box was that we never figured out the "cheeseburger" reference. We found Studebaker (#2) and Council Oak (#5) and had fun with both of them. However, we didn't find Death by Chocolate (#6) ~ we are 99% the box is missing on this one. We didn't have any problems with the clues and essentially made it up to the "find" directional and then hit a snag. The "stag" clue was unclear to us, but we searched in every possible location, and that box just wasn't there! :-) So our record for the day was 3 out of 5, which was a little disappointing. We normally find everything we look for! But, the stamps were lovely and we learned some neat things about South Bend, so we can't complain too much!

Sunday we went to a Greek festival and ate way too much Greek food. It made us glad that we had spent Saturday letterboxing and actually moving about!

Attack of the killer mosquitoes!

At least, that’s what ‘boxing on Saturday felt like! We were in two parks that were swampy and/or near a lake... and boy, were the skeeters out in force! They were even attacking J, who is normally pretty immune to the bloodthirsty hordes (she inherited good genes, as her dad and grandma are the same). Anywho, besides the killer mosquitoes, we had a very successful day. We found the beautifully carved new The Jetsons Series; the clues were easy to follow and the entire series would be a nice family outing. We also picked up the Superhero Series, which B enjoyed because of his long-standing love of all things superhero-related. We finished up the day with Burchfield's Bounty. And just in time, too, as the sky was darkening and the temperature dropping. So, we headed off to Cracker Barrel for the in-between meal of lunch/dinner (sorry, no potato drama to report on) and then back to Ann Arbor... just beating the rain.

Also, please note that we have left our two boxes of the temporary May Day series in Maybury State Park for the moment. We will probably pick them up in a week or two and will post on LbGLK and here when we decide to pull them.