What is the Most Bizarre Thing?

You know that question on the Atlas Quest profile - the same question that pops up on AQ message boards time and time again - the one that asks "What's the most bizarre thing you've ever discovered while letterboxing?"  Well, I always felt a little inadequate since I had never really found anything bizarre.  Sure, I stepped in a dead rotting deer carcass once and I have come across teens (and some not so teen) lovers and I have seen my share of snakes and spiders, but never have I seen anything that I really considered bizarre.  Till yesterday.  I had found my box and was busy stamping in while sitting on a wonderful little bench by a reservoir.  I always thought I was pretty aware of my surroundings when I box alone but this just proved how focused I am once I find that little Tupperware treasure. Less than eight feet away from me, directly in my line of sight on the other side of the trail, I noticed something that didn't look quite right.  It actually took me a few seconds to realize that I was looking at guns!  I have a handgun of my own and I go target shooting but what I know about guns could fill a thimble.  I tried to stay calm in spite of my heart beating ten times faster than it normally does and I returned the box to its hiding spot and walked back to the guns after donning a pair of gloves.  After all, if these were used to commit a crime, I didn't want to leave fingerprints!

 

I picked one of the guns up and the first thing I noticed was the weight.  My handgun is pretty heavy.  This seemed really light.  Then I noticed that there wasn't a removable clip like my gun has.  I quickly decided that these MUST be toys but I wasn't about to try shooting one to find out.  And I didn't like holding it, real or not.  Instead, I took pictures and left.

  

That evening as I told my daughter about this find, she was extremely agitated with me for not calling the police.  She knows that I know nothing about guns and she kept reminding me that I had no way to determine if they were real or not.  She had me feeling pretty guilty when she said "what if they WERE real and Nicholas (my 8 year old grandson) had found them and tried them out."  By this time, I was debating calling the police even though it was almost twelve hours later and I kept thinking that someone must have come to collect them.

Then I called my fiance who is much more knowledgeable about handguns and he looked at the pictures.  I have to admit that at first, he hesitated to say that they were not real.  But after looking at the close up and seeing the "made in Taiwan" stamp on the barrel, he agreed with me that some kids were probably playing and just left them laying there.  

So now, next time someone asks "What was the most bizarre thing you found while letterboxing?" I  have an answer.

Seriously Spooked

 

A couple of weeks ago I did a letterbox located on the grounds of the old Harrisburg State Hospital, also known as the State Lunatic Hospital.  As a child, I remember playing in the park-like grounds of this mental hospital as my mother visited her aunt who eventually died there.  I didn't know at the time that it was a mental hospital, I just remember it being beautiful and my sisters and I would run around and enjoy the beautiful location with our dad.  The hospital closed many years ago and has gained the reputation of being haunted.  There have been other letterboxes located on the grounds and I have to admit to an eerie feeling whenever I visited there.  Every other visit was done with another letterboxer, I never was there alone. However, on this day, I was in the area and since this was rated as a driveby, I decided that I could make a quick stop.  Well, it WAS spooky.  There are a lot of old buildings here and it was almost totally deserted.  The box was located at the bottom of several groups of stone steps.

 

 I went down the steps and found the box and have to admit that I was very nervous the whole time I was there.  As is my custom, when I leave a boxing site, I always turn around and look to be sure that everything looks normal and that I haven't left anything behind.  Everything looked good.

I walked back up the steps and reached for my car keys but they were NOT there.  My keys are on a very long lanyard and when boxing, I wear them around my neck for easy access.  The lanyard is a Pittsburgh Steelers lanyard and is black and very bright yellow and is very easy to see.  When I found they weren't around my neck, I checked all  my pockets and then dumped my letterboxing bag out looking for them.  Nothing.   By this time I was frantic and figured I had to retrace my steps down to the box to see if I had dropped them.  So back down the stairs I went.

I was really spooked as I got back down and saw, right in the middle of this round bench, a yellow and black lanyard. If I wouldn't have totally remembered that I had done my normal check before leaving the area, I wouldn't be too concerned about this but since I firmly believe that there are spirits roaming the earth, I also firmly believe that one of them pulled my keys off of my neck to lure me back down into the woods for one more visit.  I wonder if it was my Aunt Alice!

The Carnival of the Lost Souls

For many reasons, I haven't been to a letterboxing gathering for several years but when one was posted that looked as though it would be as much fun for my grandson, African Wild, as it would be for me, I began working on my daughter, Outofsight, to allow me to take him along with me.  A family camping trip had been planned for the same weekend so my daughter was hesitant to have him with me instead of with them but when he expressed an interest in attending the second grade "dance" being held at his school on Friday night, I was granted weekend custody.  Ironically, about half way through the day on Saturday, I got a phone call from Outofsight telling me that they were heading for home because they had been placed in the same camploop as the permanent campers and because it was the last weekend of the season for this campground, all of the long term people were busy winterizing their RVs and no Halloween activities were planned for the children in the campground.

The gathering, The Carnival of the Lost Souls, was hosted by Ralph Spoilsport who was resplendent in his tuxedo and I was in awe of the multitude of seasonal appropriate stamps that he had carved for the event.  Ralph is an excellent carver and I have always been thrilled to find his normal planted boxes so all of these new stamps were such a delight.  Here he poses with Undead Hunter Fred who doesn't look at ALL the way I expected him to look.  I was also very happy to meet him after finding many of his boxes and also enjoying his carving skills.

 

African Wild had almost squealed in delight when we pulled into the parking lot of the Mount Laurel Community Park and we saw the playground within a few yards of the main event area.  He managed to stay with me in the pavilion for about four stamps before the call of the merry go round pulled him away from me for most of the remainder of the day.

 

African Wild did manage to come into the pavilion with his new friend, Idlesun in the white hat, to watch and listen in fascination to his first heavy metal band, Terror Inc.

 Lots of stamping into event boxes and personal travelers as well as personal signature stamps.  Here in the green, Anne of Green Gables, in the blue is Blue Delft, and with the cat whiskers is SuzyQLou.

 The Booshmen, father and son, and more excellent carvers, hard at work on the plethora of stamps.

 Long time letterboxing friend, Leafcutter, and our new letterboxing acquaintence, Night0wl, exchange stamps.

It was so nice to be reunited with other long time friends, on the left, Wednesday Bowler and Celtic Cat with a very delightful new friend, Treasurehonas.  With her back to the camera is Lotus.

Another new letterboxing acquaintance, standing in the center of the picture, is SWGS.

 Two more long time friends, Pink Panther and Geckospot working on the event stamp.

 African Wild and Idlesun made a return visit to listen to the band.

 

 

 The boys then joined the rest of the kids on the most popular spot of the day.

 The hazy moon was high in the sky just as Ralph announced that the night boxing was ready and we were all treated to nine more Ralph stamps.

 Till we had reached box number nine, African Wild was almost asleep on his feet.  We were hardly in the car for five minutes before he was out cold and even after I had completely emptied out the car which contained everything but the kitchen sink, he was still asleep.  I finally had to wake him to get him into his bed where he collapsed on the bottom bunk instead of climbing to his normal bed on the top.  I knew that the day was a success for him when I overheard him chattering nonstop to his parents all of the good things that he had enjoyed.  I already knew that it was a good day for me also for so many reasons but most of all because Ralph created a day that made my grandson happy.

A Plethora of Library Boxes Plus Two

I had been interested in a series of library letterboxes that were published a couple of months ago in the Dauphin County area.  The boxes were IN the libraries and there is actually one in each library in the county system.  The day had come to do them so I tucked a new audio book in my CD drive and headed for Harrisburg.  However, I did make a few stops along the way.  First stop the library in Robesonia where I was only the second finder on a library box, strangely enough called the Robesonia Library Box, that had been placed almost nine months ago.  From there I headed through Lebanon where I stopped for another library box.  I was to enter a lot of libraries this day and I have to admit that this was the only library that made me a bit nervous based on its location and clientele.  

Then it was on to Dauphin County for a really nice series of boxes.  I knew that I was going to have a good day when I saw this poster in the first library.  Our old friend, Elvis Presley as an advocate for reading?  I believe that I had read somewhere that he did enjoy reading but I had never seen this poster before.

 

One of the libraries had this lovely mosaic wall in the parking lot.

It took me about five boxes before I realized that the stamp was the library system's logo done in different colors.  I spoke to one of the librarians who explained to me that the logo is actually eight opened books to represent each of the county libraries.  Each Dauphin County library has been given a different color which is why the boxes are named after the colors that are used to stamp in the stamp.   Once I knew this, then I realized why the stamps were not hand made stamps and I did enjoy the background history.

The last three libraries that I visited on the Dauphin County tour took me to the northern part of the county to some of the most beautiful country that I have seen around here.  I passed by the sign to this covered bridge and vowed to myself to stop and see it on the way back.  I had no time to waste since the libraries are not like Walmart and open 24 hours a day and I had to make good use of my time.  But I did manage to collect all of my treasures AND to stop to see the covered bridge.  This one, like most that I have visited, were in a very peaceful setting.  But this one had a little added attraction in the form of a real off road parking lot and a picnic table.  It always feels so risky when I have to pull off to the side of the road to take pictures of the bridges.

After I finished the DCLS series, I still had some daylight left so I made a quick stop at the Fort Indiantown Gap cemetery for two quickie boxes.  This is another place that is extremely pretty and peaceful and the sight of all of the flags always gives me a chill.

Both boxes were near the amphitheater which I reached after a close encounter with a pair of deer.  They had a stare down with me in the road right to the entrance to the amphitheater and I guess I should say that they won because I did sit there in the road until they decided to move.  I took some pictures of them but they were very fuzzy and not worth posting here.  Those fuzzy pictures also became the final reason that I needed to return a brand new two week old Canon Elph.  I had been very unhappy with that camera from the first picture I took with it and fortunately, today, I own a new Pansonic Lumix camera with which I am very pleased.