The Campin' and Stampin' That Almost Was

Poor Barney, his best friend, Bill, has been gone for three weeks now. His Mommy is busy going to work every day and running to Canada for four day vacations while he is stuck with his big sister. Sissy's house not only is home to the Lil Milkmonster (who is turning into a miniature version of Dennis the Menace) but also one big, gentle lab (Laura's guide dog) and one huge, huge, wild, rough lab. So if Barney isn't spending his time in almost total solitude in his own house, he is spending it in total chaos in Laura's house. And now his Mommy was packing things up and setting them in his bedroom in preparation to go away again! What's a puppy to do! Well, that answer for this little guy was to go into deep depression. Wednesday morning, I could hardly get Barney to move. He didn't want to go outside, he didn't eat, he looked so pathetic that it broke my heart. Wednesday night was even worse, he just lay there apathetically. What I couldn't explain to him was that when I left for Maryland, he was going to go with me. Dogs understand some things but this just wasn't one of them.

Thursday morning, he seemed a little perkier but not a whole lot. I had been planning on leaving Thursday night and heading toward Little Bennett with a few stops for drivebys on the way and then getting up early on Friday morning to begin boxing in the area. When I got home from work though, I decided to wait till Friday morning to leave in the hopes that Barney would be a bit more responsive. I was also beginning to worry that this was more than depression. Friday morning, though, he seemed a whole lot better. Not perfect, but better than he had been. So we packed the car up and headed to Maryland.

Our first stop was just north of Frederick, Maryland, at Energizer Bunny's Keeping a Watchful Eye on Ewe, a two box series on the Monocacy battleground. As you can see from the picture, the weather was absolutely perfect - a crystal clear sunny day. We quickly found our two boxes here and hopped back into the car and headed towards Little Bennett, stopping at several other box sites. For various reasons, the next four stops proved to be unsuccessful. We have had a glorious spring and the green growth reflected this. Some areas were so overgrown that finding a box in them would have required a machete. The other boxes were unobtainable because of my biggest letterboxing fear - POISON IVY. I saw so much poison that day that I almost totally emptied my bottle of Tecnu. I felt creepy crawly all over everytime I saw a hairy, nasty poison vine growing up a tree. Barney was still acting slow and even though he tried to keep up with me, his heart just wasn't in it. At that time, I decided to settle for some drive by boxes and try to avoid the poison. I chose another Energizer Bunny series The Drive By, Bye-Bye boxes, thinking I would be safe with them and Barney could remain in the car. Success with all four of these boxes encouraged me to try another set of local boxes. This series was just planted in May so I figured that they should still be accessible. Wrong! The birdhouses which were the landmarks to look for were overgrown in the six weeks since the boxes were hidden. Once again, I left empty handed and headed to one which looked almost a drive by. Meow by Naturegirl proved to be really easy to find because it was sitting right out in the open. I stamped in and read the directions carefully to try to determine where I should replace it and found the area totally covered in - you guessed it - POISON! I took my walking stick and carefully tried to push the box back where I thought it should be and made the executive decision that, since I was not having fun, I was going home.

I called Irene of Hikers 'n Hounds and left a message for her that because of Barney's apathy and my finding poison everywhere, I was going to head for home. After I did this, I reached the little town of Damascus and I remembered that there was a driveby there that I had wanted to get last year when we were in the area for the Boyds gathering. Yachty Girl's Tweety at the Art Way was my favorite stop of the entire day. The Art Way is a rubberstamping shop and I was in heaven. This was the first store I was ever in which actually sold Color Box's cat eye stamps. I loaded up on them, grabbed a dauber which was silver on one end and gold on the other, added a few colored markers and made my way to the cash register. In my excitement, I almost forgot there was a box there! But I caught myself in time and found that I had just missed Sewsowbizzy by a few minutes. The good news about this shop was that it put me in the best frame of mind that I had been in all day and as I drove home, I was actually feeling good about my day.

I have a whole collection of pictures that I took that day but they are all from boxes which I couldn't find. Pretty pictures from a pretty area but meaning nothing to me at this time. I did manage to find eight boxes so the day wasn't a total waste and I have to admit that it did feel good to sleep in my own bed that night instead of in the back of the car so my day was actually a pretty good one.