Waymarking the Summer Away

It is summer.  It is hot.  I hate hot so I don't letterbox much in the heat.  After four or five weeks of not letterboxing and carving a ton of stamps that will need to be planted, I knew I needed to find something else to do or I would go crazy.  Then, I remembered that I had signed up for Waymarking many years ago.  Although it is part of the geocaching website, it is about as close to geocaching as letterboxing is.  The theory is the same but to be honest, I have found a lot of enjoyment in not having to sneak around to find waymarks.  If you aren't familiar with it, it is a scavenger hunt type game just like letterboxing and geocaching.  But instead of retrieving boxes and logging or stamping into them, you simply find a spot that corresponds to one of the 1114 Waymark categories.  You then take pictures of it and if someone else has already logged the site, you add your pictures to their waymark.  If no one else has already claimed it, you can fill out the form and have it listed as one of your waymarks.  See, a lot like boxing and caching, find a spot, log it or post it.  It is really easy to do this as some of the categories are as boring as McDonalds or other fast food restaurants.  But the ones that caught my eye are the historic categories.  I live in Berks County, PA, and the area is filled with history.  There are over 100 National Register of Historic Places in this county.  Lots of parks and interesting buildings, especially in the city of Reading.  So, I have found myself meandering through the county with my camera and looking into so many nooks and crannies that I didn't know existed.

But to me, the best part of this has been the participation by Bill.  He has always ridiculed letterboxing, not understanding the pure pleasure of getting out in the woods and just enjoying the peace and calm.  But now, since he was raised in the city of Reading (which I wasn't) and I have been asking him questions about some of the places that I have found, he has actually been accompanying me on some of my treasure hunts and doing a LOT of reminiscing about the way things used to be.

Most of the waymarks that I have found so far have been pretty much what would be considered a driveby in letterboxing.  No hiking, no equipment to carry around except my camera which I always have with me anyway.  The heat is a very minor factor in this hobby and I have been happily snapping away and spending my evenings posting or logging.  The downside to snapping pictures is that they are on my computer.  Not every picture I take qualifies to be a waymark but they could still be good pictures.  So, I have decided to start adding some of my waymarking adventures to my letterboxing blog.