Labor Day Letterboxing

Yesterday was one of those fly-by-night unplanned days - too cool for the last day of the pool, and we were just home in the morning, tackling laundry. So I convinced Ed and the kids to head on over with me to The Watershed to explore the letterboxes placed on one of the trails by one of the recent interns with the nature center. If you are new to letterboxing: essentially, people have hidden waterproof containers with rubber stamps and log books all over the country. They can be found in parks or just random locations. The clues to finding the boxes are posted on-line. Two good resources for information are letterboxing.org and atlasquest.com. You can search for boxes near your location and plan your own quests. My family has gone several (around 10-ish) letterboxing hunts in the past few years, both in NJ, near our home and in other states when we’ve travelled on vacation (its a great back-up activity for those downtimes). We have a basic idea of what to expect - but yesterday, while we found all three letterboxes (woop, woop!), was one of those days when our collective brains were not fully engaged before we left. Here are some of the rookie mistakes we made:

#1 - As we were getting to leave the house, Ed told the kids to put on their crocs. At least I paused -- asking if wouldn’t old sneakers be more appropriate? But since it hadn't rained in a week, we had a quick discussion that regular sneakers and crocs would be okay. This was big mistake #1 - remember we were headed to a WATERSHED?? Sadly, the bells did not go off for me before we left, and it wasn’t long into the hike before Jordan's legs and feet were completely covered in mud. She had mud squishing between her toes - yuck! Somehow my 5-yr old son, Ben, faired much better walking on the edge of the trail, but not Jordan - she trudged right on through the middle of the muck. On the upside - crocs and legs are easily washable, and no one fell and got covered from head-to-toe.

#2 - I did not pack bug spray as it was cool and not that humid. We wouldn’t be out there too long and the bugs shouldn’t be too bad, right? WRONG! Remember, WATERSHED! Insert here - “Breeding Ground for Mosquitoes.” Again not quite thinking things through before we left. The bugs actually didn’t bother us too much as long as we kept moving along the trail, but as we slowed to look for boxes or to stamp in our log books, we were completely eaten up. I have bites all over my arms and legs, including a lovely one, smack-dab in the middle of my forehead. We also saw some of the LARGEST horseflies I've ever seen in my life!! One of them kept dive bombing us at the last box! I don’t know if insect repellent would have even helped with that one!

Last mistake #3 - based on our previous experience on trails with letterboxes, we assumed that after finding the 3rd box we would be somewhat near the end of the trail which would put us back close to our car. At least, it’s always worked out that way in the past. After the third box on this quest, we continued to follow the trail deeper into the woods and along a stream for about another 20-30 minutes. At this point we were completely turned around so that we weren't quite sure how far we were from the starting point and our car AND we were about 2 hours into the hike. Eventually, we hit an area of bright orange stagnant water - there was no way around or across without trudging into the sludge. We could see the trail continuing on the other side, but we made the decision at that point to back track and head back the way we came. Maybe if we had a naturalist with us we could have found a short cut back along a different route, but the cards weren’t with us yesterday. Fortunately, since we weren’t trying to figure out clues and the terrain on the way back, we made really good time to the car.

All in all though, we had a great time. The hunt was challenging but not ultra-difficult. We found all three boxes, and the kids were thrilled to discover a hitchhiker in one of the containers. Here is a link to the directions for this letterboxing experience in case you might want to brave it. If you’ve never letterboxed before, I highly recommend it for a family or group activity. My Brownie Troop Co-leader and I plan to take our troop on this hike in the next few weeks. Now that I’ve scouted out the location and confirmed that all three boxes are still intact - we are optimistic that we can avoid some of the unanticipated pitfalls that my family encountered this weekend. I know one thing for sure, I’ll definitely be packing the Cutter!

Off to Caladryl my spots......