letterboxing

A lot of our activities this weekend include Letterboxing, so I thought this might be a good time to describe what Letterboxing is to anyone not familiar with it.

All over North America (and possibly beyond?) there are boxes hiding, "planted" by Letterboxing enthusiasts. Inside these boxes are notebooks, stamps, and ink pads. Letterboxing enthusiasts find these boxes by following clues to their whereabouts. When they find one, they stamp the box's notebook with their own stamp, and then stamp their own notebook with the box's stamp. That's a pretty breif description, more detailed information can be found here.

All you need to get started is those things pictured above -- a notebook, a stamp (something unique -- you can use a store-bought stamp, make your own, or have one professionally made for you -- our family stamp, pictured above, is a logo that I designed and The Map Man had professionally made for us), and an inkpad. Then all you need to do is go and get some clues and head to a natural area with a box hidden in it. And, voila, you're Letterboxing!

With clues in hand, we drive ourselves out to a state park (or other natural area) where there is a box hidden. We follow the clues (in this case, the final clue told us that the box is hidden inside a leaning dead tree, after the clues led us to the right area of the park), and then search for the box. This is the boys' favorite part, hunting for the "treasure".

We then look through the box's notebook to see all the other stamps of all the other people who have visited the box. And we leave our own stamp on a page, along with a short greeting to the other people that will be looking at our entry.


We then stamp our notebook with the box's stamp, and jot down the date and location where we found it.








The final step is to replace the box where we found it and make sure that it's hidden well, so that the next Letterboxing enthusiasts that come along can have the fun of hunting for it, too. It's also to keep it concealed from being found accidentally by hikers who may not know about letterboxing and mistakenly think that it's trash and remove it.

Letterboxing is a great family activity, we highly encourage everyone to give it a try! If your family likes hiking in the woods, they will LOVE letterboxing!!