Spring Break Adventure: Letterboxing

Every Spring Break needs a little adventure.  Ours are mainly very small adventures, but we like them.

In August, the Lone Star Girl's Girl Scout troop went to a geocaching and letter-boxing event at camp where they learned to do both.  It was fun and I had every intention of commencing the family letter-boxing adventures right away but we never quite managed to squeeze it in until now.  Wednesday was our letter-boxing day.  The whole family cut out simple stamps from sheets of foam rubber and made little letter-boxing logs out of index cards and yarn.  We packed them up with ink pads and clues to the whereabouts of all the Corpus Christi letter-boxes we could find mention of on the Web that were not out on the National Seashore (there is only so much one can do in one day) in an accordian file and headed out.

Our first stop was the Science and History Museum where we found the hidden micro after a little searching.  It had a beautiful stamp in it that we stamped into our logs - we realized right then that the stamps we made are pretty primitive, but we are mere beginners, after all.  We had a hard time squeezing a card with all of our stamps on it into the micro with its stamp and other notes but we did so and re-hid it with little attention from any wandering muggles.

There were supposed to be four letter-boxes hidden at the Hans Suter Wildlife Area.  We think we found the locations described for all four but could not find the boxes.  I am still glad we went, though, because we got to see lots of beautiful nature and get lots of exercise, even if it led to whiny, hot children who needed a snack break afterward.

We found two lovely letter-boxes at Poenisch Park and stamped their stamps in our logs and ours in theirs before re-hiding them.

There was supposed to be a letter-box in Ropes Park, and the clues were very good.  I am sure we found the bush where it was supposed to be hidden but we could not see it and the bush was oleander.  While the letter-box may have been hidden deeper than I could find by poking around without touching the oleander too much, it didn't really look to me like it was there and I wasn't willing to have any of us get more cozy with the poisonous plant, so we didn't find that one.

Letter-boxing was an interesting way to spend some family time outdoors.  We may have a Portland letter-boxing day sometime, as it looks like there are a lot of them there.  Maybe we will even make a letter-box someday!