This is Why I Letterbox - Pop's Eyes Were Blue and Big Sister

I was having a rough day.  My daughter was in the emergency room and we were keeping my grandchildren while anxiously awaiting word on Laura's condition so my emotions were rather fragile.  I quickly glanced at Atlas Quest and saw an email that there was a new Pennsylvania box.  When I looked at the clues, I immediately broke down crying.  The boxes called Pop's Eyes Were Blue were in memory of our father who passed away last July.  Sepia Slipper, aka Karen, my little sister, has just returned to letterboxing after a several year hiatus and she had been telling me that she had prepared some special boxes and needed a very special place to place them.  She didn't give me any other details.  So I tried to remember a very nice park in the vicinity of where Sepia Slipper lives and I told her about a wonderful boxing experience that I had a few years ago finding Silly Moosehead's Looney Tunes series in SGL 211.   Guess where Pop's boxes ended up!  Causing even more emotion for me was the email that I received a half hour later announcing yet another new PA series called Big Sister.  Guess who the Big Sister is!  I have to admit that giving this a "This is Why I Letterbox" designation is mostly emotional but the trail and the stamps are every bit as deserving.  Thank you so much, Karen, for the thought and work you put into these memory boxes.

I headed to the SGL early the following Saturday, a bit disappointed that I wouldn't be first finder which usually doesn't matter to me at all but these were special boxes to me.  Another boxer had visited already during the week when I was working.  Seven more months till my retirement and my ability to box during the week....but that is another story.  I headed for the first of the two Pop boxes and lost control of my emotions again.  Our dad loved to build birdhouses.  It was one of his only hobbies later in his life and Karen was able to find birdhouses with suitable hiding spots nearby for both of these series boxes. I could almost feel Dad smiling at the two of us for honoring him with our simple little scavenger hunts.  I proceeded on to the five box series that Karen carved and hid for me and I was so touched that she  pointed out things that she felt I should be thanked for when they are just things that I love being and doing.  So, thank you, Little Sister.  I don't want to give away too much about these two series so I decided that I would just show pictures of the beautiful trail that they are on.  

 As I logged in to the boxes, I was happy to note that our woods are finally greening up.   I had arrived to the trail in the middle of a rainstorm which did end about a half hour later but everything in the woods had that hazy damp feeling to it.  Still beautiful though.

 When I say that everything is greening up, I really meant everything...even the fungi on the trees.  The rhododendrons and mountain laurel looked ready to break open in flower.  As I started down the trail, the sound of spring peepers was almost loud enough to drown out the bird calls but as I was on my way back to the car, the Canadian geese honking took over as they headed toward the lake.

 

 There obviously was some type of civilization in these woods as detected with the various bits and pieces of ruins.

 When I saw this ruined tree from a distance, my first thought was that a Peter Toth Sleeping Giant had appeared out of nowhere.  Even though it wasn't a work of art, it was a tree worth photographing.

I had been introduced to "trail trees" by the Silvan Lady while finding some of her boxes in Nescopeck State Park.  When I had been on the SGL trail previously, I had no idea that the bent trees that I was passing were probably markers created by Indians to give directions to fellow travelers.

I can't end this blog segment without mentioning that my brother in law, John, is an excellent cairn builder!

Found: One Missing Dwarf Planet and One with Five Moons

Ralph Spoilsport has planted a very enticing stamp series along a very longgggggggggggg stretch of the Lebanon Valley Rail Trail.  While I know that I can walk the nine miles to collect the stamps, I also know that walking that long on a rail trail can become a bit monotonous so I decided to do these boxes in sections and I was lucky enough to enlist my friend, Idlemoon, to accompany me for a couple of planets. 

 

We met early in the morning at the Root Beer barrel.  I know that you can get root beer there but I am not sure why it is placed in the parking lot for the trail nor does it say when it is open.  We knew that it wouldn't be open with our early start so we took advantage to snap some pictures of it.

 We started our walk and passed some pretty berries and a funny dedication sign on a bench.

 

We walked and we walked and we walked and we walked and finally found the dwarf planet.  And then we walked and we walked and we walked and we walked and saw where we thought Pluto was planted but it was behind about twenty feet of thick summer growth.  So we circled around to it through a less dense section of foliage and Idlemoon looked and looked and looked and didn't find the box.  We were very upset because we had walked over three miles to get to this point and knew that we would probably not want to make that walk again when the summer growth died back.  Idlemoon was saying to me "if I had placed this box here, I would have put it right here"  and as she moved the debris over the area that she WOULD have put it, the box fell out from underneath that area.  Yay, Idlemoon!!!

 Since the 13 mile marker is close to the end point of this series, we decided to try to convince everyone that we had actually walked the full 9 miles of the series.  But sadly, we didn't really do that.

 Although we had walked three miles to get to this point, we looked a little too fresh to have walked the whole length. 

 

As we trudged the three miles back to our starting point, we debated continuing south to find the next box but with the heat and humidity setting in, we decided to wait for another day for those.  You know what would have tasted really good when we reached our cars?  A nice cold root beer but the barrel was still buttoned up tight as could be.

Rainbow!

 I started out early with high expectations for a busy letterboxing day.  The sun was out, it was on the cooler side for a June morning and I coasted through the country roads looking forward to the day ahead. It was the first day of summer so sunrise was the earliest it would be all year.   The roads were empty as I traveled them about 5:15 AM and when I saw this rainbow ahead of me, I thought I was imagining it.  So I pulled to the side of the road and watched it emerge, not sure why it WAS emerging because as I have already mentioned, the sun was already out for the day and I had seen no sign of rain. 

I was even able to see the other end of the rainbow.  When I captioned my Facebook picture of this end, I called it "the other end of the rainbow" and my cousin suggested that would be a good name for a book.  I have to agree and may have to think about that as an idea for when I retire in a couple of years.

Well, no matter why a rainbow had appeared, the view was stupendous, much better than my boxing day turned out to be, but what a way to start any day.   And when the second rainbow tried to make its appearance, I felt truly blessed.  

It Was a Blue Delft and Idlemoon Kinda Day

Our boxing buddies, Blue Delft and Idlemoon had planted a plethora of boxes for Dutch Country PAL 2014 day and I was really eager to go find them.  I enlisted Red Cruzsader and Dogs with Wings to spend the day with me and we started at our search by climbing to the top of the Highpoint Scenic Vista so that we could watch the sunrise over the Susquehanna River.

 We could look across the river to the windmills that were circling lazily high about the river.  Before the day was over, we would be at the base of those windmills but for now, we were enjoying Highpoint, a park that none of us had ever visited before.

 

 This park was a bit different from most parks in our area.  It was mostly fields with trails mowed through them and I followed at a respectful district so that I could take my normal from the rear pictures.

 From Highpoint, we moved on to Sam S. Lewis State Park. I grew up picnicing at this park with my sisters and brother.  It is a small park but it is best known for its piles of large boulders that generations of kids have climbed on.  It is high on a hill top and when we pulled into the parking lot, this hot air balloon was coasting slowly in front of us.

 

 I learned something new during our visit here, I never knew that there were real trails in this park.  All we were ever interested in were the rocks!  But we went in search of the GRANDEST, LARGEST tree in the woods and were rewarded with a great tree which made Red and me look small.....oh, and a couple of totally neat boxes.

 Red stamps in to one of those boxes

 

From Sam Lewis we headed across the river to climb to the windmills we had seen earlier.  I didn't take many pictures on the walk up because the walk was a tough one.   Idlemoon had previously joked that it was about a four mile round trip walk - three miles up and one mile back.   The ladies had made the trip more bearable though by hiding several boxes to be found on the way up.  It broke up the walk and made it a little less tiring.  The details that went into all of the boxes that we found this day was wonderful  A lot of care and thought were put into the logbooks which matched the stamps and the finders' prize for one of the boxes we found is one of my favorites ever.  Below, Dogs with Wings and Red stamp into one of these wonderful boxes.

 

At one spot, I was able to catch a picture of the river through the trees.

 

Eventually, we reached the top and I was enthralled with the sight of the windmills close up.  I have been in awe of these structures ever since I saw them for the first time many years ago on our visit to the Flight 93 crash site.  Now we were so close to them.  They are massive!!

The view from the top of this climb was worth every painful step that it took to get up here.  Absolutely gorgeous!

 This was about as close as I would get to the edge of the hill though.  My fear of heights was kicking in and when Dogs with Wings offered to take a picture of me, I was VERY nervous standing here even though I was sure that it was very safe and secure.

 Red Cruzsader made me very nervous again as she clung onto the landing to look for the letterbox.  

 Our trip back down the mountain allowed us to pay a little more attention to our surroundings since we had captured all fo the boxes along the way and didn't have to focus on clues and we soon saw some of the wildlife in the area.  This little toad was right on the trail and in danger of being trampled until Dogs with Wings moved him safely into the woods.  No one was too worried about this little snake though as he wriggled onto the trail and then quickly slithered back into the woods.

 When we got to the bottom again, we took a little detour along the rail trail that runs around the base of the mountain and checked out this red caboose.

 Ground level view of the Susquehanna River.  It looked a lot more beautiful from high above on both the east and west sides of the river.

 Since we finished the Blue Delft and Idlemoon boxes a lot quicker than we thought we would, Red Cruzsader suggested a stop a bit further north to be first finders in a series of Ralph Spoilsport boxes. 

 Red had solved the location for the boxes and led the way through the park where we found four out of five of them.  It is unbelievable how quickly the warm weather caused the grasses and brush to fill in any open space previously exposed.

 We took in the view of this lovely pond and soon Red was exploring the dam end of it looking for a box.

 As we finished up our day, Dogs with Wings and Red Cruzsader exchanged personal stamps and some travelers.  They had not previously met but it turned out to be a very good letterboxing ensemble.