Sunday, July 27, 2008
My sister, Chris told us about letterboxing a long time ago. Then I had three more kids and my brain went mushy and I forgot all about letterboxing. In April, a family in our ward was going letterboxing which refreshed my memory. Then, in planning my family's reunion I started looking for fun things to do along the way and thought letterboxing might be fun. Well, we're not doing any letterboxing as part of our family reunion (too crazy) but yesterday Mark and the boys did some themselves, up at BYU's infamous Mount Y.
For those of you that don't know, letterboxing is like geocaching sans the GPS. Both are like treasure hunting. You get directions off the website and then you go hunting for a box with a rubber stamp and an ink pad hidden inside. Then you stamp your book and stamp their book and that's about it. But it's really fun and the boys really enjoyed it. There are letterboxes hidden all over the country and I'm pretty sure if you search your city, you'll find some right in your neighborhood. Some are easy and some are harder to find but you can sort of choose your own level by reading the clues and other peoples' comments. Anyway, here are a few pictures of the boys' first letterbox adventure and uh, thanks Chris for the great idea. We can't wait to go again.
 
Here's the boys before their departure. It was really hot that day (like 99 degrees) and even though it was still morning hours, they were sizzlin'. They found a couple of lizards on their way up the mountain which the boys thought was pretty exciting--an actual lizard in it's natural habitat!
 
Here they are at the top of the "Y". If I had gone up with them (I watched the babies instead) I think I would look a lot like Hunter--limp and dead-like at the top. After they recovered from their hike, they started looking for the special rock that would tell them where the box was hidden. Obviously, they found it.
 
Here's the actual hiding place of the box and the box itself.
 
And here's the stamp and a note from the people who hid the box. They made the stamp out of an eraser which Noah thought was particularly cool. Anyone can hide a box just about anywhere and I think we're thinking we might hide our own.
 
The boys didn't just stamp our notepad but they also stamped themselves. And of course, after all the work, they all had to take a moment to enjoy the view.
 
posted by Shana # 4:37 PM 
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