Girls Day

Pink Panther and I have a kind of standing arrangement that we will do a Girls Day of boxing every Saturday when her husband, Black Swan, works. Today was one of those days and we had been planning for it for many weeks. We had decided to make it a mystery box day since there seemed to be a large number of them in the Perkiomen Trail area of Montgomery County. We worked on puzzles for weeks, looking up hockey players, solving wordcross puzzles, reading wine websites and we were finally ready for our adventure. We invited our friend, Dogs with Wings, to accompany us and the three of us started out at 6 this morning. After immediately getting lost driving to the trail, we revised our agenda for the day and started out with Lightnin' Bug's Slow Bollard. I think I can take part of the credit for his creation of this box. When we had teamed up for the 2006 Road Rally, there was a box in this area and when we passed the Slow Bollard sign, I was intrigued and Rich hammed it up. Next thing you know, there was a Slow Bollard box and we have now added it to our collection.

From Slow Bollard we made our way further up (or was it down) the trail to PA Capitol Tile 93: Apples, one of Silent Doug's series based on the Mercer tiles in the Harrisburg Capitol tile building. This box has been in place for two years along a very busy trail and is remarkably still in good shape. Of course, the steep little walk that you have to take to get to it might have something to do with it. But regardless, it is safe and sound.

Next stop was to look for Nattybumppo's Rally Runner, the first mystery box that we were going to search for. In spite of the fact that there seemed to be a bit of a glitch in the middle of the clue, we girls were able to conquer this one pretty quickly. Of course, all of the work had been done ahead of time but we were feeling pretty good with one mystery box under our belts.

We met our one and only failure of the day when we were unable to find She Turned Me into a Newt. We really didn't expect to find it since Lightnin' Bug, Indigo Vulture and Sheba, three very experienced boxers had already attempted it but we thought we would try anyway. But we somehow had it in our heads that Girl Power would prevail. It didn't. I loved the clues for this box, it took me a while to figure it out but when I did, I was very impressed with the cleverness of it. But we WERE successful with the box which follows it, ok it kinda sorta follows it, Newty Bumppo Made Me See Red. This one had also taken me awhile to solve but not because I didn't understand it. This one needed a magic ingredient which I didn't know I possessed but when I did figure out what I had, it worked great. This picture came out a bit fuzzy but it is Dogs with Wings stamping in at this box.

We then left the Perkiomen trail for a while to go after the box that we had worked hardest on preparing, Stanley Cup. It took days and days of research to do this one and even then, we only had a vague translation of the clues. Some of the vital words in the middle of the clues didn't seem to make sense but we decided to attempt it anyway. You have no idea how ecstatic we were when we found it. It was laying out in the open, it looked as though it may have been washed out of its hiding spot by all of the rains that we had in June but because there was so much foliage around it, it was still in a very safe place. We were so happy to have this one also because the preparation had been so intense.

About this time, we had exhausted our mystery boxes and headed for one of Dogs with Wings own boxes, Matters of the Heart. I think that Sherry was a little nervous about being along with us while we found one of her boxes but it turned out great, the clues were excellent and accurate and the stamp was wonderful. While we were stamping in, she showed us some of her carved stamps for boxes not yet planted and to say that she has turned out to be a wonderful carver is an understatement. I can't wait to record those finds into my logbook. On the way back to the car from this box, we realized that another box was in the vicinity. We also stopped and found the Golden Oak.

It was now lunch time, my stomach was telling me this although my watch wasn't working because it seemed the battery had died. This was the second time in a row that I had boxed with Pink Panther and my batteries died. I wonder what this means? We found a nice little pizza type restaurant and shared log books and boxing stories and wedding stories and just plain old girl talk. It was great! From here we had to say goodbye to Dogs with Wings since she had some committments for the evening but Pink Panther and I headed for one more mystery box, The Appellation Trail. When we pulled into the parking lot for this box we were greeted with the sight of about fifteen kittens lounging everywhere. They were the friendliest cats and my friend, the Deer Whisperer, immediately had them flocking to her. It was amazing seeing them everywhere and we almost hated to tear ourselves away to go find the box, but we did. What a delightful place this was and what a gracious lady working there. We were surprised to find a little bonus in the box, a gift certificate left by the last finders of the box. After browsing and stamping in we headed back outside but all of our kitten friends were gone. At this time, we decided that we needed to be gone too and agreed that we had had a very successful day but it was time to head for home.

My boxing days have been so much more fulfilling lately with the time shared with my friends, some old, some new but all wonderful people who share the same passion for this hobby that I do. These are times I will always value and today was one of the best. To quote Pink Panther, we were on a Letterboxing high today - part of it from the boxes we found but mostly from the company we kept. Thanks, Mary and Sherry!