New Friends and New Boxes

After my 6.5 miles on Saturday, when I got up on Sunday morning, I was really wondering if I would be able to handle the eight boxes which I had planned on searching with Sherry from Dogs with Wings. I was a bit stiff and moving a little slower than I wanted to. I was meeting Sherry at Reservoir Park in York to search for Pengy, a box placed by a fairly new boxer, the Royal Fish, in my home town of York, PA. When I was growing up, I had sledded on the hill in this park so I was really anxious to go return home to see if all was as I remembered. Sherry arrived and I was telling her that we were going to be joined later in the day by the Crayola Posse and that we would also be meeting the planter of this box. As I was telling her about this, who should appear a few hours earlier than I expected to see them but my friends, True Indigo and RGBisMe. Pengy was a great box for us to get warmed up for our day. I don't remember ever walking through the park before, I think I just sledded down the hill. Things didn't look anything like I remembered, except the hill itself. This little park was obviously really popular with dog walkers who were running loose. This would not normally be a big problem, especially for Sherry and me, but today we were privileged to be walking with Birbanto, the letterboxing cat! Here, Sherry is making the acquaintance of Birbanto under the watchful eyes of Momma, True Indigo, and Pappa, RGBisMe.

From Reservoir Park, we headed for William Kain Park and Nixon Park in southern York for a whole slew of boxes. We were first finders for E man's new box, just posted last night, Baseball Buddy . We also searched for another E man box, Blast Off. This talented young man seems to have already captured the skill needed to make a wonderful stamp. We also found a box belonging to a friend of E man, Journey Man. We then picked up a number of Wilson5186 boxes in these two parks, including Gone Fishin, The Black Bear, The Whitetail Buck and my favorite walk of the day The Great Horned Owl. We got to walk on a boardwalk, one of my all time favorite things in the woods.

At one point, we had to make a quick stop as Sherry tried to coax an exchange out of a friendly garter snake in the middle of the parking lot. After she couldn't get one from him, she crossed the parking lot to his buddy and again, was unable to get an exchange. I was really happy when she used my walking stick to move both of the snakes off of the road and out of my site. Another phobia for Jan - snakes.



But my absolute favorite part of this day was our get together with The Royal Fish and her sons, E man and TNT. This is a fairly new family to letterboxing and they were so eager to learn everything that they could from us. Their boxes were almost perfect boxes and we offered a few things which we thought might make them better, such as not placing a plastic bag on the outside of the boxes, and they were so happy. They threw themselves with gusto into exchanges, especially enjoying exchanging with our four legged hiking companion! They were already schooled in the art of personal travelers and I have to admit to being embarrassed that they had found the answer to my PT and I had forgotten to bring it along with me. And after accompanying us on one of our box searches, they and Sherry were introduced to the cootie game,much to the boys' delight! It was such a pleasure to meet this family, to box with old friends, and to return home for a few hours.