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.

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.

This Is Why I Letterbox - Pickle Passionate/Possessed

 Early on a warm August Sunday morning, I started out for a letterbox series in York County, the county that I was born in and spent the first 40 years of my life in.  I had been a little surprised when I read the clues to a new Red Cruzsader series based on the little town of Dillsburg.  I had spent a lot of time in this town in my past life when my ex in-laws had owned and operated a little restaurant bar in its outskirts but I had never heard the story that was told in the clues to Pickle Passionate/Possessed.  Besides being a nice recounting of the pickle relationship to the town, the clues took me on a historic little tour which I could have bypassed because I was able to map out the location of the box just by using a map.  I am so glad that I followed the Pickle Nickle tour clues exactly, because, as I wrote in the comments on my "find" on Atlas Quest, these boxes really were a lot of fun to follow.

 

Red Cruzsader is a marvelous carver and an imaginative planter.  I rarely have two consecutive boxes which I feel earned a "this is why I letterbox" designation but Pickle Passionate/Possessed really deserved this in my estimation.