Carving at Camp

Today was day #2 for my letterboxing interest group at camp. I have a group of 12 girls, ranging in age from 9 to 15. Yesterday, after a brief overview of what letterboxing is and examining the contents of a letterbox, everyone chose a trailname and then designed a stamp image onto an eraser. Today we carved. These girls are great! I was a little nervous as to how the carving would go (and had nightmares of finger gashes), but they got the hang of it right away and several of them carved extra stamps while waiting for the other girls to finish. There were some very creative trailnames and also stamp images. We finished today off by decorating a small purchased logbook with markers and their stamp images. So now they are equipped to letterbox… well almost…

Tomorrow we will be learning what exactly a pace is and how to use a compass, including a little compass exercise that will end at a letterbox I placed for the activity. Then on Thursday we are out on the trail, putting it all together and talking about some of the responsible aspects of letterboxing while we make our way to the box — respect for the environment, leave no trace, discretion and replacing/covering the box when done.

And that will wrap up our little 4-day mini course in letterboxing. The girls are having a lot of fun and we’ve had some onlookers from other sessions wanting to know if the letterboxing interest group is offered next week again.

Farewell Dinner

We are planning an informal farewell dinner for Stargirl and El Cajador, who will soon be leaving our MI letterboxing group for new adventures in the Dominican Republic.

Mark Tuesday, July 29 on your calendar… exact time and location will be coming soon, but it will be a restaurant in the greater Grand Rapids (MI) area for dinner. Sorry about the weeknight, but unfortunately scheduling didn’t work out for a weekend. Hopefully there are still some who will be able to join us!

Old and new boxers alike are welcome! This is not really an *event* as we won’t be doing much letterboxing (although I am sure there will be some stamping going on), but it is not a closed gathering, rather is open to anyone who wants to come hang out with a fun group of letterboxers for a few hours and bid farewell to a couple of folks we have come to know and love over the past few years.

LB Interest Group

Next week I will be leading a letterboxing interest group at camp. The group will run in girl’s camp for a 4-day session, 1 hour each day. I’m planning to go over the basics — what it is, how it works, tools of the game, etc., come up with fun trail names, design and make personal stamps and a small logbook and then on the final day, go out and find a letterbox that I have pre-planted. The clues will use some of the more common letterbox clue strategies, including compass bearings. I’m trying to come up with clues that draw on camp history and tradition and will require the girls to do a little research the night before — since they don’t have access to computers, it would have to be things they could find out by asking staff members and/or alumni. It would be fun to each create a box for the other members of the group to find, but that would take more time than we have — maybe that’s letterboxing 203. I am considering putting out a couple of additional boxes that they could look for outside of the group, maybe during their free time.

Of course being on camp property, these letterboxes are not available to the general public. But hopefully it will spark some interest and send a few kids home to get their families involved with letterboxing. Should be fun!

Old Shoe’s Brews

OldShoe and I have started a new series of letterboxes celebrating some of his favorites microbreweries. As many of you know he considers himself a beer connnoisseur and brews his own hopped up barley concoctions in our basement (strictly for his own personal use of course). Just as we generally couple our travels with letterboxing (my passion), so we also make a point to stop at all microbreweries along our route (his passion). Over the years he has come to have several favorites and we thought it was time to marry the two things with a letterbox series.

The first two installments in the series were planted last fall on our trip to Michigan’s U.P., after which I promptly misplaced the clues. While transferring clues from the old site to the new site this weekend, I realized there were several boxes from last fall’s U.P. trip that had not been posted, so I set out looking for my notes, and found the scribbled brew clues. Both boxes are in pretty secluded places, so while I cannot be 100% certain they are safe, I am quite confident they are tucked away in their hiding places, anxiously awaiting visitors. The boxes are planted in the general area of the breweries they represent, but not inside the place and not necessarily right outside the front door. We do however encourage you to support craft brewing and make a stop at the fine establishments represented.

Since OldShoe is also an avid Sudoku buff, the clues for each box are based on a Sudoku puzzle. After solving the puzzles, the solutions are used in various ways to arrive at the clues — yeh, they take a bit of figuring and thinking. Old Shoe’s Brews #2 is a mystery box, the location of which is revealed as you work through the clues. This one requires a bit of a hike, but the area is very scenic and so worth the time it takes to get from one end of the trail to the other (you may even find other letterboxes along the way). Old Shoe’s Brews #1, representing his favorite U.P. microbrewery, provides the general location up front but you have to do a little digging to find out exactly where the place is (hint: talk to the locals).

73 Boxes…

All of the clues for my active Michigan lower peninsula boxes are now up — 73 of them. There are clues for a few inactive or missing LP boxes that I will add as those boxes are replaced. I’ll also be adding a few boxes that were planted for events and remain active at their respective locations, but have not previously been listed anywhere other than the gathering clue book.

Over the weekend I’m planning to work through the upper peninsula clues, get the status updated on all boxes and post info on my hitch-hikers. At that point I will shift focus from clues to page content.

A note about the “printer friendly” option on the clue pages — it will only print text, which should be sufficient for the majority of the clues. But if a clue contains a graphic, it will not come through on the printer friendly version, rather should be printed separately.

Hope everyone has a safe and fun 4th of July weekend!