Crafty Hiking

A few years ago while my husband was stationed in Bahrain, I went through a pretty depressed time and in the quest for a rewarding hobby for the whole family, I stumbled on to letterboxing.

Well, the short version is a letterbox is a small plastic (or some such) container with a hand carved (usually) rubberstamp in it, and a notebook. This box is planted, but not buried somewhere, and you need to use clues to find it. When you find it, you discreetly remove it from it's hiding place. Then you use the stamp in the box to stamp into your notebook, and you have your own hand carved stamp which you use to log into the notebook in the box. It's kind of like a passport. The notebook in the box reflects who has found it, and your notebook reflects the ones you have found. It's basically, crafting (hand carving stamps and making logbooks) meets hiking.

My stamp said 'Jet Fuel Only', I also carved one for my son, a Pokemon character called Piplup, so he is known as 'Paulie Piplup'. My daughter loves dogs and I had carved a Biscuit stamp for a Dog Postal Letterbox (a story for another day), which never got sent, so that's hers and she is 'Daughter of JFO'. My oldest son uses a store bought compass, but doesn't have an official trail name yet. My husband is new to letterboxing, and we are still throwing around trail names and ideas for stamps.

Well, we were holding out with like 7 or 8 found for a while, then, all of a sudden we've got 18!!!

When we went to Disneyland we made a short vacation out of it, camping for three nights. Yo, the LA area is quite nippy in January. Me, Miss B, and the baby ended up sleeping in the truck the last two nights, the boys and Paul had mummy bags, so they were fine.

We did Disney on Thursday, then slept in Friday and letterboxed from 3pm until, oh, real late, because we were getting lost and misdirected. For a while we were 2 sought, 0 found. Then, finally we started getting lucky!! NOTE TO SELF: Next time print more detailed maps.

Anyhow, on Saturday we letterboxed our way back home along I-5, saw some really awesome views of the Pacific Ocean.

Got home tired, but a great time was had by all, at least I think so, because we all got home in one piece.

Can't wait for the opportunity to plan another mini vacation!

Make a Smilebox scrapbook