But today was redeeming and we went for our first Letterbox search through the Atlas Quest, A Letterboxing Community website! I first learned of this game through Melynda at Your Wild Child, and knew I wanted to play with my kids too.
Letterboxes are little caches where folks hide a stamp and a log book. It provides for a mini treasure hunt to liven up your day. People sign up on the Atlas site giving clues to the location of their letterbox, and other folks search and find the cache. After finding the cache you stamp your book with their stamp as well as stamp their book with yours. I think stamps and puzzles are good for kids...
It took me a few months to finally get it together and find letterboxes in our town, but we did it.
Here is the play by play.
First, we went to Atlas Quest and did a search for our town. The results came back with 15 letterboxes in our town!! Whoo Hoo!!! And I had some business that I need to conduct at the letterbox I chose for our first journey.
We hopped in the truck with our little black book.
And our stamp and ink pad.
Then drove to our destination. The big orange sign is one of the clues for this letterbox.
So following the directions, we found the cache covered with rocks at the southeast corner of the big sign.
There was a waterproof can hidden in this letterbox, which we promptly opened.
The letterbox stamp was:
We stamped our entry into the letterbox notebook and put our town and date.
This whole hunt was great! The kids were excited and it made our ordinary trip to the hardware store more fun. There was one little problem however. We were sad that the stamp for this letterbox was MISSING. :( So we could not stamp our book.
Next time we will fair better and with 14 other boxes in our community I think we have some puzzling to do. I know the next location is at the local dog park and we drive past it all the time.
Anyway, check it out! Go to Atlas Quest! It can't hurt now can it?
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16 comments:
I hope you are well and truly on the mend.
The boxes are such a cute idea. It's a shame someone took the stamp for the box. That's really sad.
OK, I was -->thisclose<-- to yelling at you for being in San Diego and not telling me so that I could go meet you but then you kept going on and on about the deadline and I thought, "FIIIIIIIINE... I GUESS it's OK if I'm not your #1 PRIORITY." But I am Top 5, right? ;)
I'm so excited to check out this Atlas Quest site! I'm going to go right now and search our area. Thanks for the tip!!
My daughter has done this twice and both times the letterboxes were missing. One had a note in its place left by the park ranger saying he had taken it. :(
I think letterboxing would be SO much fun. I just don't have time for another obsession right now! Yuk on being sick. Please get well soon!
How fun! There is another version of this you play with a GPS,I think it is all over the world.I met a guy who was playing it in the Netherlands but was from the US,hmm should have payed more attention I guess. I am going to check this out!
When "geocaching" first started, we participated...then the meanies infiltrated it, and started leaving hateful things or taking all the things...Letterboxes sounds more fun, but I hope it does not catch the attention of the "spoilers."
Please take ALL your medicine and try to get extra rest; impossible with 2 kids, yes, true.
Okay, that is a new letter boxing community I didn't know about. We have been using a different site, with some of the same clues. Your site has more clues in our area. Learn something new everyday!
What a great game for the kids! There is something similar here in Ontario but you need to use your GPS to get the coordinates to the package/box. It was great when I was the Brownie leader educational and fun. I love your horse stamp. Hope the kids had a good time
That sounds like a lot of fun. I hope you're feeling better soon. I've been sick for weeks now too. It's no fun.
I've heard about this kind of thing. It sounds like fun!
I hope you start feeling better soon! Being sick is just no fun at all! :0(
Hope you're all well now! *HUGS*
The Letterboxes look really fun!
What a fun idea for the kids. As always, you have two of the most adorable, photogenic children around. So sorry you've been sick and then having to work. I hope you stay healthy for the rest of the year.
So glad you got out and letterboxed! And thanks for the link to my site, too!
Letterboxing sounds fun! We have several in our area, according to that website. May give it a go with the kiddies this summer.
Hope you get to feeling better soon!
I hope you're feeling better soon. I've been sick for weeks now too. It's no fun.
Work from home India
What a fabulous idea! I have never heard of that and just love it...and totally emailing my SIL this post. Oh, and OF COURSE your stamp is a horse :-)
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