The Hunt Is On

Jeremy's sister and brother-in-law are avid geocachers. We've been "hunting" with them a few times on vacation and enjoyed the clue-solving and treasure hunting hobby. But without a GPS unit of our own we couldn't do any more than that.

This was until I found out about letterboxing.

I have a friend here who does letterboxing with her young teenage children. It's a similar idea to geocaching. People hide boxes and write clues on how to locate them. With letterboxing the clues will give you driving or walking directions and sometimes compass directions on how to find the boxes.

Inside each letterbox is a unique stamp that represents the name of the box or the surrounding location or the person who hid the letterbox. You can then stamp this stamp in your personal letterboxing logbook to have proof that you found it. Then you stamp the logbook in the letterbox with your own personal stamp to show that you were there.

I decided this sounded right up our alley. Enjoying time out doors. Visiting new places in our area. Letting the boys feel like pirates on a treasure hunt. So I made Jeremy a letterboxing kit for fathers' day.

It included some information about letterboxing, a number of sets of clues for some boxes in our area, a "logbook," a stamp pad, and some carving blocks to carve our own stamps. (Um. . . I bought one for me too--Jeremy can't have all the fun!)

I put them all together in this satchel. Technically it's an old purse of mine from high school. Good thing I was a little bit -I dunno- grunge? tomboyish? back then because it that the perfect look for a hiking satchel. (And I'm glad I found an actual use for it again after all these years. That is why I never throw things away. It's a blessing/it's a curse.)

Here's Jeremy really confused about my giving him a purse for Fathers' Day.

No, really once I told him all about it he thinks it's great.

And Owen thinks it's great too. And he's already decided he wants his personal stamp to have R2D2 on it.