How Might a Letterboxer Spend a Rainy Day?

You know that question that keeps popping up on the interview portion of the Atlas Quest profile?  You know, that one that asks how a letterboxer might spend a rainy day?  This weekend, I had to decide how this letterboxer would spend a weekend that had thunderstorms written all over it.  I actually enjoy boxing in the rain but thunderstorms are a different story.  I love thunderstorms and really enjoy watching them in safety but don't consider being in the woods being safe from them.  Just as an interesting side note, last week I was at our home in Florida and it was storming fiercely.  Our area had no rain but as we were watching the six o'clock news while the thunder was crashing and the lightning was dazzling, they announced that our town of Deltona had recorded 3,297 lightning strikes within the last hour.  Pretty amazing, right?  Well, remember, we had no rain, just thunder and lightning and we went outside to watch the show after we heard the news broadcast and both of us were rather startled to see a rooster strutting back and forth across our parking lot.  Then he went to the door on the condo across the road from us and started pecking on the door.  I think he was a little unsettled by the unusual weather and wanted OUT of it!

But to get back to letterboxing and threatening thunderstorms, I decided to spend my time wisely.  So I started making a mess of my paper supplies and the next day ended up with a stash worthy of a letterboxer on a thunderstormy day.

My kitchen table went from this above....to this below and I won't have to make logbooks for a very, very, very long time.

Ironically, the rooster covered logbook on the bottom right is my new trail logbook.  I didn't intend to tie my rooster story in with the logbook but there it is!  I decided to make my own trail logbooks after my hiking buddies, Idlemoon and Blue Delft, convinced me that my stamp impressions just weren't as sharp as they could be in the Pro Art logbooks I have been using for years.  I purchased some nice quality card stock and cannot believe the difference in the stamps that I have tested so far.  I have a friend who says the main reason she goes to work is to pick up tidbits and hints about improving life from her co-workers and I guess that thought carries over to boxing with friends instead of alone all the time.

What Does the Desk Say?

I had read an article in our local newspaper where the journalist analyzed his desk and explained the significance of many of the pieces of memorabilia on it.  After reading the article, I took a good look at my desk and all I could think of was that my desk says that I am a letterboxer!

 

The End of an Era

I am in mourning....deep, deep, deep  mourning.  For many years of letterboxing, I have been plotting every new box in certain areas on my Microsoft Streets and Trips program.   Pennsylvania, central Florida, Delaware and Maryland are the main locations that I focus on.  Whenever we plan a trip, I plot the boxes for the vacation areas we will be in.  As you can see from this small sample, there are tons of boxes to look for in my local area.  Since I have been using this program for about ten years, many of the older boxes may be missing but I have them plotted so I can check it out for sure if I am in their vicinity anyway. 

In June, I bought a new computer and moved the program onto it, and last month, I went to the Microsoft website to check for new updates, only to find this terrible message.

 Fortunately, I did purchase the CD for this program the last time I updated it so I can install my maps onto future new computers, but the news made me very sad.  There is no way to move all of these plotted boxes onto any of today's programs so I am planning on placing my CD in our firesafe, earthquake proof, water resistant lock box.  Most likely it will still be there long after I am gone and my grandchildren will pull out this dinosaur of a program and wonder just how their Mimi used it.

2014 Stats

Everything that we do at my job ends up being a stat of some sort and even though I really don't like the idea that my work with my customers can be "statisized" (I know that isn't a word!), I decided to play with my letterboxing stats as this year comes to a close.

Stats for 2014
Boxes found - 927
Events attended - 10
States in which I found boxes - 8
State in which I found the most boxes - West Virginia.  I had to check on this one to verify it but thanks to two very prolific events, WV beat out my homestate of PA by 30 boxes.
Boxes planted - 12

Goals for 2015:
Spend more time boxing with friends.  I am hoping that Crayola Posse, Idlemoon, Blue Delft, Red Cruzsader, Dogs with Wings are reading this!
Find a box in SC so I can fill that state in on my profile page map.
Visit New England to box (and also to fill in a few map states).
Plant more in PA. After all, I have 15 new sheets of SLQ to use up.
Plant in Volusia County, FL.  SLQ would probably work well in Florida also.
Keep up with my blogs.

And this concludes letterboxing for the year 2014.  Hello and welcome to 2015!

Revenge of the 5th Two Days Early -- because here on the Dark Side we never play by the rules!

I recently had the opportunity to box with and to get to know Red Cruzsader a little better during the Ides of March event in...well....the Ides of March!  I have found many of  her boxes and I knew her well enough to say hi to at other events and now I was excited to attend an event that she was hosting. I had the feeling that she is an overachiever, and it didn't take long for me to discover that I was absolutely correct.  I had missed last year's event because my niece had the audacity to get married on the same day so I was really looking forward to attending this year.

 

Squeaks, African Wild and I arrived at the event to find our hostess totally decked out in Star Wars style.  The whole pavilion was filled with Star Wars memorabilia and event boxes closely linked to the same theme.  Above, she is explaining what our first assignment would be.  We were sent out to search for the traditional boxes hidden in the park.  These boxes were filled with stamps and clues for other boxes so we had to pay a great deal of attention to each treasure that we found.  The kids were happy to be out and scouting out the next locations for us.

Below is our team.  We successfully completed the series and posed for a picture before heading back to base.  The team members from left to right are Anne of Green Gables, Super Rod, DEPPsperado in the back, my pride and joys African Wild and Squeaks circling the irrepressible Treasurehonas, my friend, Idlemoon, behind Squeaks and me in the blue jacket.

 Darth Squeaks made her debut back in the pavilion.

 The usually fearless African Wild shows his terror of Darth Squeaks.

 Then Darth African Wild appeared, where are all of these evil villains coming from???

 Idlemoon and Treasurehonas...stamping, stamping, stamping.  And also mugging it up a bit!

Our next assignment was to attack the spaceship pinata.  Here SWGS attempts to save us from destruction...and failed!  The next defender succeeded in knocking the pinata off of its anchor.

So, the ever resourceful Red improvised by tossing the pinata like a softball.

 She has great form!

 Idlemoon, is that you???  There was a special stamp to anyone who came in costume and I think Idlemoon earned hers.

 One of the things that I love about so many of our local boxing events is that they are usually located in a park with a playground so the kids can keep busy the whole day.  Much to my despair, my kids tire of boxing rather quickly so the playground was a lifesaver.  The park also had a small stream with a bridge but my Squeaks found it much more interesting to try to jump over the water.   During the event, we did have a downpour and leave it to my little granddaughter to be the first one down the sliding board after the rain stopped and to come off it totally soaked to the skin.

 I am not sure that Red planned on the noodle sabers being weapons for the kids but it didn't take long for them to find a good use for them.

One of the best things about an event is the opportunity to meet new people.  I had corresponded with Tiggermama on Facebook several times and now I finally had the opportunity to meet her.  Here she chats with our hostess.

 Another Facebook friend is Don't Panic, here he is with his wife, Snowbaby.

 Here Eiryn was big time into stamping.  In the background in pink is Lotus and standing behind her is Scarab.

 Idlemoon and DEPPsperado are deep in conversation.

 Warble and Crew made the long trip from Indiana to exchange stamps with our own Ralph Spoilsport.

 The running joke for the afternoon concerned this limp little squirrel event box.  He contains a roadkill stamp and the joke was that everyone asked if the finder had "squeezed his nuts".  Here Sheba has retrieved the squirrel and is prepping to do some squeezing and Psychiker is ready to make a video of the procedure.

 The day is ending and a group of us got together to share some last minute thoughts and to verify that we got all the stamps there were to get.  From left, Psychiker, Treasurehonas, Anne of Green Gables, Celtic Cat, Idlemoon and Lotus.

 We had the perfect ending to the day as we were driving home.  It had rained for a short while at the event and it looked as though we were following the rain storm as we headed east on the PA turnpike.  We could see this rainbow ahead of us for miles and miles as we seemed to follow the storm at just the right speed.

 

I think that Squeaks must have had a good day at the event, it didn't take her long to fall asleep, a sure sign that she had a busy day.

Thank you so much, Red Cruzsader for another wonderful day.

Another Why???

Yesterday when I pulled into the parking area at the Okehocking Nature Preserve in Media, I noticed a set of keys laying on the fence bordering the lot.  I checked them out and there was a Kwikset house key and a key that looked like a car key.  I felt bad for the person who had lost them but then noticed that they were very dirty and starting to tarnish so I determined that they had been there for quite a while.  When I came back from my hike, I noticed that someone else must have examined them because they had been picked up and replaced in a different position.

This got me to thinking on my drive home, how can letterboxes which are actually hidden in the woods go missing but these car keys which were right out in the open remained?  Strange!

Why????

Would someone place a box less than 50 feet from the only letterbox (which just happens to be mine) in a 9000 acre wildlife wilderness and then even reference the fact that there is another box across the trail???  9000 acres full of trails, I just don't understand why!?!

Why, why, why???

That Final Letterbox

Me to a T!

I just saw this on someone's profile and thought it describes me perfectly.  I always feel that I have to apologize to people I hike with because I do hills slowly (one more reason I usually letterbox alone) but this makes me feel a whole lot better!

Going uphill slowly is better than going downhill fast.

Of course, this applies more to life in general than to hiking but I can use it however I want!

Team Little Dog

To those who knew me when I began letterboxing in 2003, you might remember that I had a different trail name at that time.  My little mixed Yorkie and Westie named Barney and I formed Team Little Dog.  Barney went to events with me and  hiked with me and kept up so well in spite of being...well...a little dog.  His first letterboxing friend was Dude the Wonder Dog, the hound part of Hikers and Hounds.  Barney had one flaw when we were boxing, he thought that everyone we saw on the trail was there to pet him.  My letterboxing was much slower in those days due to spending time convincing Barney that we were looking for little plastic boxes, not new people to pet him.  I slowed down in boxing when my grandchildren arrived, choosing to spend more time with the beautiful babies my daughter shared with me instead of plastic boxes.  However, I did still dabble in boxing but Barney was no longer my trail companion.  He was over ten years old by this time and content to stay at home and sleep.  I changed my trail name to Janila and only used the Team Little Dog name on the few times  he did hike with me.  Barney was the best little dog there was.  He was easily trained and eager to please.  He was not a barker in spite of his small size and Yorkie heritage.    On Sunday, December 30, we had to make the difficult decision to send Barney to the Rainbow Bridge.  He had begun to exhibit signs of dementia, forgetting where he was, not remembering when we opened the door that he should come inside or go outside, walking in circles for hours at a time.  That night, he had been walking in circles and I was sitting with him.  He would lick my hand and then walk, lick my hand again and then walk some more.  He couldn't relax from the walking in circles and I knew that he was giving me the signal that it was time to go.  We took him to the Berks Emergency Animal Hospital where we were treated with so much love and respect that it made a very difficult time a little easier.  I held Barney as he received his shots and caressed him till there was no heartbeat.  

I don't think another dog could ever replace this happy, sweet little dog.  I look forward to seeing him again some day.

Just Sharing

 Just a few pictures taken during a letterboxing Sunday a few weeks ago.  Llama or alpaca?  Which ever it is, it seemed to enjoy the same view that I was enjoying.

 

 I enjoyed this autumny view all by myself....well, just me and the fishes. 

 

What a wonderful front yard!

 

 I found this sad little stuffed dog about five feet away from a letterbox that was on the edge of a graveyard.  I hope it didn't belong on one of the children's graves.

THE END!

Tourist vs Resident

Although this is not necessarily a blog about my letterboxing experiences, it is inspired by a message thread on Atlas Quest.  Emcsquared recently posed the questions:
What do tourists do that gets under your skin?
If a tourist wants to blend in, what should they do? What should they stop doing immediately?

What followed turned into a discussion of various peeves of local people.

We live about 45 minutes away from center city Philadelphia, a city that I love dearly, and one of my Bucket List wishes is to walk every street in that wonderful city.  I had a map that I was logging all of my walks but it went the way of everything else that was on my hard drive when my computer crashed last summer so I guess I will just have to start walking all over again.  As a walker, I see everything there is to see on each street.  I do look up a lot, I do walk slowly and I always, always, always carry a camera (these are some of Miss Moon’s tongue in cheek pet peeves).  I want to see EVERYTHING there is to see.  However, I don’t tie a sweater around my shoulders (a MysticzGal irritation) because it is tucked into the waistband of my precious Columbia fanny pack (a Wry Me no-no).  Anyway, the point is that I take my time, I stop into local restaurants because I am in the area and want to experience everything. I buy local items and help to support the local businesses.  I have the time to tour leisurely and since I drive myself there, I can come and go when I please.

The story changes when I make my once a year visit to New York City, a town I would never have the courage to intentionally drive in alone.  At this point, I will have to mention that I did get lost once on my way from Pennsylvania to the Pirate in Every Port event held in Groton, CT.  My GPS somehow took me right down Broadway on a rainy Friday night.  Fortunately, I was not in a hurry and didn’t panic and eventually got to Groton safely, swearing never to drive in NYC again.  My once a year trip is on a tour bus which my employer offers to us each spring.  Another Miss Moon peeve is “it's kind of annoying that unless they are visiting someone who lives here they NEVER leave Manhattan.”  Well, we are dropped off around Time Square and have eight hours to do whatever we want.  I would love to visit something outside of this area but since we have taken this trip for the past eight years and our time is so short, we have visited almost every tourist area there is to see.  We have taken the open deck tour buses and travelled once to Brooklyn but to be honest, it was a residential area and although lovely, there wasn’t a whole lot of reason to get off the bus to look around.  We only had eight hours.  I suspect after seeing the numbers of tour buses dropping people off constantly during the time we are there, it is the same for a lot of people.  One year we did plan our day around NYC letterboxes and did visit a couple of wonderful areas, thanks to Miss Moon, but then Bill grew bored and impatient with letterboxing and we didn’t do that again.

In my experience, letterboxes are a terrific way to get to see places that are a little non touristy.  A few years ago, we visited Virginia Beach and were guided around the town by the boxes that I had planned.  Last September, I visited VB again and letterboxes by Casa del Sol and BB Stacker were my main tour guides.  Bill and I made a cross country drive to South Dakota a few years ago and picked up a couple of boxes in each state that we visited.  In doing this, we got to see the gravesite of William McKinley in Ohio and the Beulah Schoolhouse in Wyoming, we enjoyed some delicious ice cream in Indiana as well as experiencing a whole lot of unexciting rest areas in various states.

Now back to some of the other peeves on the message thread.  According to one responder, she doesn’t like it when people “come to our state and shop at outlet malls which sell the same crap they could have bought without leaving home.”  I do that.  I spent 37 years working in retail.  I hate to shop.  My theory is that if I can’t buy it at the grocery store, Walmart, Home Depot or Boscovs, our local department store, all stores within a mile and a half of our home, then I don’t need it.  When my work day is done, I come home and enjoy my family, I don’t want to shop.  But when I am on vacation and most of my family and all of my housework is back in Pennsylvania, I have the time to shop and to buy some of the same things that I could buy in PA if I wanted to waste my family time shopping.  I figure I am supporting the local economy here.  After all, who works in these shops?  My guess is that they are mostly local people so I will indulge in a little shopping when I am being a tourist.

Another of the same responder’s complaints is “come to our state and want to buy bargain homes”.  We did that.  We bought a condo from an elderly gentleman who was moving into his son’s home.  We did get a good deal on it and now we come here and support the economy in Florida as well as in Pennsylvania.  There are four condos in our particular building.  The other three are sitting empty because houses are so plentiful in Florida so I figure we actually did someone a favor by buying their house.

I don’t have a rebuttal for everything that was mentioned on this board.  In fact, I tend to agree with Wry Me’s comment that people should wait till they leave to wear the visors and souvenir T-shirts they purchased while visiting.  However, I have to admit to wearing my Philadelphia Phillies baseball cap the same day I bought it last spring when we attended the preseason game in Clearwater.    And I have to agree 100% with Amanda’s wish that tourists need to read signs.  I find them invaluable, however, in defense of some tourist areas, it takes a while to get used to how the signage works.  For instance, in some towns, the street signs indicate the cross street and in other towns, the street signs tell you what street you are currently on.  Also, if a bus sign tells me the A line runs through this section, I  may have no idea what the A line is.  So some homework needs to accompany the sign reading at times.

And this brings us to the next part of my discussion. Four years ago, Bill bought a retirement home about an hour away from Disneyworld.  He is retired and has snowbirded here the past four winters. I still work so I come to Florida whenever the airfare is really cheap and I have a few days of vacation.  Most of the time I remain in Pennsylvania working and spending lots of time with my daughter and grandchildren and shoveling all the snow by myself while Bill lays by a pool.  

When I first started coming to Florida we did a lot of the local touristy things.  I had no desire to visit Disney World but we did go to Down Town Disney.  The walk through the town is free although the price of the merchandise is outrageous.  We visited the Ponce Inlet Lighthouse which is only about twenty minutes from our home and climbed to the top along with many other visitors.  We took the St. John Riverboat tours and oohed and aahed over the alligators we saw (I still ooh and aah over any alligator I see!) We drove on the beach of Daytona Beach, something that thrills me each time we do it.  We did normal touristy things in order to get to know the area.  Now that I have been coming to Florida for a few years, I have begun exploring all of the nooks and crannies, much like I do when I visit Philadelphia.  This is a very historic area consisting of many small towns and I drive up and down the streets and back roads every chance I get.  It is not an area with many restaurants and shops so we eat at home most of the time or we go to a chain restaurant because that is what is here and that is where the local people work and eat.  However, I still do touristy things like stop in the local post office which is an aged white house and ask the post mistress just why the sign says “Welcome to Historic Enterprise” and she explained to me the history of her little town.  I have started to walk in all of the parks even though I am VERY nervous dong this.  I have had to learn about alligators and snakes and alligators and red ants and alligators and spiders and every rustle of the palm trees' branches convinces me that one of these is headed my way.  I have learned that squirrels running through the palm trees sound a whole lot the way I imagine an alligator would sound doing the same thing.  I tried to use letterboxes to guide me around the area but I have been very disappointed to discover that boxes here are not maintained and most are missing so I have given up on even searching for them anymore.

I am currently in Florida and yesterday I learned a very valuable lesson.  Hunting laws in Florida are not like hunting laws in Pennsylvania.  In Pennsylvania, there is no hunting on Sunday so when yesterday turned out to be an absolutely stunning day and Bill was intent on watching the Pittsburgh Steelers lose again, I set off for a local 9000 acre wildlife management area that I had seen on the map.  My hopes were that I would find some fascinating spots to place some new letterboxes that I had brought along with me.  I started off through a pine forest on a mile and a half trail and before I was even a tenth of a mile into the trail, it turned into the normal tropical jungle that scares me to death.  However, I decided to plod on and overcome my fear and the trail alternated from deciduous forests and back to jungle themes for the next mile.  I soon heard voices and I approached two men in their late twenties and a boy about eight years old all wearing blaze orange and carrying rifles.  They were very nice guys and told me that I needed to wear my orange whenever I am in the woods in Florida because hunting here is seven days a week from October through March.  When I asked them what they were hunting, they told me that they were looking for wild hogs and small bears.  Oh good, two more things to add to my list of things to fear in Florida forests.  They told me to stay with them because they were leaving and I would be safer with them since they had orange on and were parked near me.  We enjoyed a nice chat on the way back to our cars and they told me a lot about how to hike in this area.  I had thoroughly read the entire website which was devoted to this area and didn’t learn half of the things that these hunters taught me.  Sometimes you do just have to talk to the locals to find out the things you need to know.

One thing that I know for sure is that whether I am in Pennsylvania or Florida, the absolute best things are free and totally local.  There is an eagles' nest in our condo complex and I have watched the eagle mother and father raise two young families and this visit, I am watching them prepare the nest for the new brood which will be born before I get here in the spring.  And the views that we get from the lake which is about one hundred feet south of our home are unparalleled by any tourist attraction.   Funny how the things that are part of nature are the best things about being a tourist or a resident!

How To Watch TV

I rarely watch TV.  It isn't that I don't like to watch TV, it is just that watching TV puts me to sleep within 10 minutes.  So, I had a dilemma when I saw that pay for view was showing the movie version of one of my favorite books, The Hunger Games.  I hated to pay to rent it only to watch it in 10 minute spurts.  Aha!  I realized that if I kept busy while the TV was on, I might be able to stay awake.  I am leaving for Florida in a few days and it is amazing how many of the comments on the boxes that I have prepared to search say that new logbooks are needed.  I guess maintenance is not high on some planters' lists so, as I watched my movie, I made this group of books.  The jungle books are for a series that I have ready to plant but the others are already tucked in my suitcase.