We Didn't Start the Fire

As so often happens when I want to blog about an event that I had attended, I find that I just didn't take many pictures because I was so busy boxing.  This event, unfortunately, was no exception.  With over 100 boxes to capture, we "boxed on", a term that my friends, Idlemoon, Blue Delft and Red Cruzsader coined.  So many boxes to find, thanks to the event hostesses, Paper Trail and Chicken Little and the contributions from Team Awesome Pants and Jabber, along with a large group of wonderful carvers.  

I knew I was at the right place when I saw the sign below!

 The name tags and favors below were custom made by Castlekeepers for each attendee.  My 45 was "America the Beautiful", chosen, I think, because my AQ profile mentions my love of touring the United States.  It couldn't have been more appropriate.

 

The Billy Joel Wall of Fame!

 

My boxing buddies, Blue Delft, Idlemoon and Red Cruzsader.

 Pink boxed with us this day and we got to join in her excitement over finding her 1000th box.

We were blessed with beautiful weather, lots of friendly people and over 100 new additions to our stamp collections.  In other words, a typically wonderful Paper Trail event.

The Things You See

I spent Saturday meandering around the Fairfax, VA, area and saw a few interesting sites. I never, ever, ever saw a cemetery sale before.  Get them while they are hot!

 

Has there ever been a letterboxer who didn't ask this question?  We have pondered this many times when letterboxing while coated with all kinds of tick repellants.  As we have always suspected, there are very few reasons for the existance of ticks.

 

A lot of people who letterbox in the Fairfax area will recognize this wonderful tree carving.

Along with the unusual, I also saw much of the normal, beautiful sights that we all see when walking in the woods.  Who could not love the signs of spring after a long, cold winter.  Below, the spring peepers were peeping.

 Everything was starting to green up.

 

Spring flowers peeked out from under winter debris.

 Skunk cabbage was making its annual appearance.

 Brooks were babbling.

 I was surrounded with pretty views.

Dolphins

Who doesn't love dolphins!  I can't imagine anyone who doesn't get excited when they are at the beach and see those heads bobbing up and down in the water.  A long time ago, I was told that if there were dolphins in the area, sharks would stay away.  I am not sure how true that is but I choose to believe it.  My daughter has always been intrigued with all things dolphin and remembers to this day exactly how they look from when she could still see.  I often buy her dolphin related gifts because I know that she can visualize them in her mind.  

One of the things that I noticed as I was driving around Virginia Beach was the plethora of dolphins in front of so many businesses and tucked into nooks and crannies everywhere.  Somewhere I came across an article that said that the Virginia Beach dolphin statues are sold to businesses and the proceeds go to a charity. Great idea!  Here are some, but not nearly all, of the dolphins that I saw. All of these were near letterboxes that I sought.

 

 

 

 

 

More Virginia Beach

By day three in Virginia Beach I was getting a little frustrated with all of the missing boxes so I decided to focus on a series of boxes by Casa del Sol, all located in various libraries throughout the county.  The beauty and details and thought that were put into this series lifted my spirit and renewed my hope at finding more boxes.  I did manage to collect eight of these boxes and wished that I could have gotten the remaining few but time just ran out.  The ironic thing is that one of the boxes that I found had a stamp carved by my friend here in Pennsylvania, Pink Panther.  It was fun to see something familiar so far away.  One of the non letterboxing neat experiences that I had with this library series was the encounter with a group of blind people who were waiting with me for the library to open.  Those who know me, know that my daughter is blind, so it was interesting talking to this group of people who were gathering to use one of the meeting rooms in the library.  My daughter's guide dog had died a few years ago and she is in the process of working towards a new one since my grandchildren are older now and my daughter gets out and about more these days.  One of the men waiting had just gotten a beautiful new dog and he was very excited and proud of the job that the dog was doing for him.  It was fun to eavesdrop on the chatter and to be able to identify with their issues.

The picture below is of one of my other terrific non letterboxing experiences.  If I lived locally, I would be inclined to put a box in at this lotus pond.  I have never seen so many lotus plants in one location before, it was an awesome experience.

 After these boxes, I was hungry so I headed for one which was located at Grumpy's Bar and Grill.  Two funny things happened here.  First, one has to ask the bartender for the box and as she handed it to me, she asked me just what was going on with this box thing.  She wanted to see what was in it so I quickly explained the process and she was very intrigued.  She went on to tell me that she had just given the box to a man a couple of weeks prior to my visit but she didn't have the opportunity to get the information that she was curious about from him.  I had to laugh as I looked at the last finder of the box and saw that it had been another of my local letterboxing friends, Otis Friends.  It's a small world!  

Then, as I was stamping in, another patron came into the bar and the bartender asked him if he was coming to watch the Eagles game on Sunday.  That caught my attention since I am a big Eagles fan (yes, even with Michael Vick, I still root for the Eagles) so I asked her if she meant the Philadelphia Eagles.  She proudly told me that it was indeed the Philadelphia Eagles and that their bar had the third biggest Eagles fan club in the world.  Who wudda thunk that I would travel six hours from Philadelphia to find people who supported our own team.

I am not sure where I took the picture below but I thought it was neat to see all of the flowers on this cactus.  I have seen these in the deserts of Nevada but don't remember ever seeing one with this many flowers.  In fact, I have even grown one of these myself after bringing cuttings back from a visit to California and I never saw ANY flowers on it.   This one was very beautiful and I wish I would have gotten a closer picture of it.

 

Some of the boxes took me into Virginia Beach's center city.  I drove by this couple on the bench in search of a parking spot and when I got out of the car, I was rather surprised to see they were still kissing.  It took me a minute or two to realize that they were not real people. There was supposed to be a box near here but guess what...it was missing!  Luckily for me, there were two other boxes in the area.

  

My last stop on this day turned out to be a double stamp stop.  The Lynnhaven house is the home of a letterbox but it also has its own location stamp so I was able to get two for the price of one. I also was able to get a whole packet of patches and some more postcards!

 

When I got back to my hotel that evening, I was very disgruntled to find that I had to park in the satellite parking area which was two blocks from the hotel.  After spending the day walking, I wasn't upset at walking the two blocks but I was a bit nervous at walking back and forth past a homeless camp area.  The people there paid no attention to me at all but it just made me nervous.  I have to admit that I have never seen as many homeless people, even in New York City, as I saw in Virginia Beach.  Then when I got back to the hotel and I asked the desk clerk if there was any security checking on the cars in the satellite parking area which was in a rather run down residential neighborhood and she looked at me as though I was crazy, I wasn't feeling very confident that my car would be there the next morning.  As I made my way back to the  hotel, I had to laugh when I saw this sign because it exactly reflected how I was feeling. And my car was fine when I left the next day.

 The next morning was my last day at the beach and I was rather anxious to be on my way. I missed my little people and was ready to end my solitude but I decided to take a walk up to the beach to get one sunrise picture.  Unfortunately, it was very overcast and this was all I could get.

 My net result for my four and a half days in Virginia Beach was 33 new boxes found and about 20 not found.   The ticket I got for running a red light in Delaware on the way home was expensive.  The time alone was important to me and priceless.   The appreciation to be home again was invaluable.

Boxing at the Beach

Every autumn, I take a mental health break and go away for several days alone.  I love being alone.  Don't get me wrong, I also love being with my family but alone time is a pure pleasure for me.  Most years, I go camping and spend the days touring whatever area I am in by letterboxing.  This year, I decided to head to Virginia Beach after I found a great deal which got me a hotel room a few feet from the boardwalk for a cheaper rate than the local campgrounds.  I have to admit that the thought of a bed and a shower were more appealing to me this time than my normal sleeping on an air mattress in the back of my SUV and cold showers in the communal shower rooms.  So I set off on the first morning and made good time, arriving in Virginia and my first planned stop for a box at a rest stop.  This first experience set the tone for me letterboxing failures the rest of the week.  I got out and nonchalantly headed in the direction that I thought the box would be in.  I had camera in hand as I often do when I am doing drivebys and within a few minutes, I was approached by a lady who was cleaning the restrooms who asked me if I was there to see their new enclosure in the back of the building.  I told her no and headed in the opposite direction, casually taking pictures of the red berries which were in full bloom on the trees.  A few minutes later, she came back and asked me for my card.  My card???  As it turned out, the woman didn't believe me when I told her that I wasn't there about their new enclosure so she went to her boss who told her I needed to give them a card before I could do my inspection.  Needless to say, I left without my box.

My next box failure came on the 14 mile long Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel.  First of all, I should say that I am deathly scared of large expanses of water which makes me very, very nervous on bridges because I always imagine them breaking and my falling into that large expanse of water.  Fourteen miles of solid bridge gave me the heebie jeebies just thinking about it.  But it was the shortest way to get to Virginia Beach and I really wanted the box so I took the bridge.  Well, there was no box.  There was lots and lots of water to see and I did manage to get a few postcards and a patch in the gift shop but box number two was a failure.

 As I reached the northern end of Virginia Beach I stopped at First Landing State Park to search for several boxes there.  My first thought as I entered the trail was that I had made a really, really wrong turn and I had ended up in Florida.  These cypress swamps look just like the area along the St. Johns River near our home in Florida.  While I like the wild look of these swampy areas, I associate them with SNAKES!  I did manage to find two boxes in this park and didn't find about four of them. 

 My nest stop was my hotel which didn't really live up to its ad but was more than sufficient for what I needed so I got myself settled in and headed up the boardwalk for my next box at the Coast Guard station. 

 

Guess what!  It was missing!  Again, I managed to get a few postcards and a patch so the visit wasn't for nothing.

 Early the next morning, just at daybreak, I headed for a box at the Convention Center.  I figured that the earlier I got for a driveby at a busy place like this, the better it would be.  But I was WRONG!  I quickly located the spot that the box was hidden and watched in dismay as the parking lot across the street began to fill with what looked to be homeless people.  They congregated for a while and then received instructions from the person in charge on what parts of the area they needed to start picking up trash.  I just wasn't going to win this day either.  I was able to park my car in front of the box and retrieve it without suspicion but I couldn't pull the same trick to return it so for the first time in my boxing life, I took a box with me and returned it at the end of the day.  Yeah!  I had a found box!

 This is a picture that still makes me a bit agitated as I wonder what happens here in Pennsylvania to make our gas prices forty cents a gallon higher.  I did enjoy this price while I was in Virginia.

 One of the neatest things about being outside so much this week was the sound of the Navy jets flying overhead.  My guess is that the residents are not so thrilled with the sound which is almost non stop at some times of the day but I loved it.  The sounds did stop for a few hours on this day as President Obama made a visit to the Virginia Beach amphitheater.  Since I saw no other planes either, they may have closed the airspace during the President's visit.

 In the background of this picture is the Virginia Beach amphitheater a few hours after the President's visit and an area where I did have success finding a box.  I was amazed that the city did so well with this visit.  I passed this area a couple of times before and during the visit and traffic flowed very smoothly.  I saw police on every corner but everything just seemed so calm and well organized that I was very impressed.

 Next came my only really bad experience of the week.  There are several boxes in Redwing Park,  all of them on different trails in different areas of the park.  I didn't find the first two that I searched for but third time was the charm with a Baqash box.  Then I was off to a different trail.  I pulled into the parking area and there was only one other car there with a man sitting in it.  Now, I did have a gun with me and I know how to use it but I don't really like carrying it with me because it is heavy and I have never felt really threatened before.  I left it in my car this time but think I should have taken it with me.  As I went after a box (which I didn't find) and had just given up, I turned around to find the man behind me.  He said "I never knew there were trails back here" which I thought was rather strange since he was parked at a trail head.  I nervously excused myself and headed back to my car as quickly as I could.  I then went to another section of the park and walked the trail looking for a couple of boxes and on my way back to the card, I saw this beautiful flower in the middle of the trail.  Now, I was the only one in these woods which were not really dense and I could see through them to the parking lot most of the way and this flower was NOT in the trail on my way into the box and it is autumn here and everything is getting brown and there were no nearby trees with any flowers on so where this one came from, I have no idea but it did spook me enough to send me back to my hotel to clean up and spend the rest of the day walking the boardwalk.