About two months ago I discovered a new hobby (well two actually) - Geocaching and letterboxing. Geocaching has gotten lots of attention lately, but if you haven't heard of it, check out geocaching.com. Its basically a treasure hunt with a GPS. You look up the cache, download the info to your GOS and then try to find it. The caches (usually plastic boxes, pill bottles, or ammo boxes) are hidden in parks, cemeteries, parking lots - you name it. And they are everywhere! The larger boxes will often have small toys or tokens that you can exchange, and each box will have a log book you sign to show you found it. You also get to track all your finds on the website.
Letterboxing is similar, but it has a whole different aspect to it - rubber stamps! Each box has a stamp - usually hand carved by the planter or person who hid the box. When you find a box, you bring ink pads and stamp your log book with the stamp left in the box. You also carry a personal stamp to stamp into the log book in each box. (you also don't need a GPS for letterboxing) You can learn more about letterboxing at atlasquest.com.
So I've fallen in love with letterboxes. I've been amazed at the stamps people carve by hand, and I've made a couple now myself. And it gets even better...I can scan them and use them in Photoshop! So expect so see some in future layouts.
With both geocaching and letterboxing, you get to discover places you would have never considered before, and never knew existed. There is a small pond I've driven by for years that I stopped at for the first time to find a cache. I've visited roadside rest areas, state parks, cemeteries, hiking trails, and other neat locations. So expect some photos and layouts from all these adventures!
Here is a neat logbook from a letterbox we found in Austin:
Dear Ms. Borgfeld,
I purchased your passages(with the doorways) designs from Polka Dot Potato last year and they have since been corrupted on my computer. Do you have them for sale somewhere else where I could purchase them again? I was working on a project I can't complete without them. Thank you for your time. Mary B
Posted by: Mary Browder | 11/11/2010 at 10:13 PM