Recently some friends and I were contacted and then interviewed, about Letterboxing for an article in the Albuquerque Sunday Journal. The article was on the front page of the Living Section two weeks ago.
My Santa Fe friends, Mark, Trail Name~Lionsmane, and Diane, Trail Name~Astro D, were interviewed in person, while I was interviewed over the phone (for obvious reasons. lol!)
Here you can see some pics of them, when we met up with them in Santa Fe, with me in the middle, and another fellow letterboxing friend, Rubber Peace, on the far left.
Lionsmane and Astro D took the journalist out into the foothills of the Sandia Mountains to look for a letterbox that Lionsmane had placed there. The photos were from that experience and most of the article was written from their perspective, though my interview was portrayed on the second page. (click to biggify)
My family has been letterboxing for almost three years under the Trail Name: The Twinville Trekkers5, and we've searched for and placed boxes in five states: Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado. Currently we have logged in(found) close to 150 boxes and placed(hidden) 12 boxes.
"Letterboxing is an intriguing pastime combining artistic ability with delightful "treasure-hunts" in beautiful, scenic places that the whole family can enjoy. Participants seek out hidden letterboxes by following clues, and then record their discovery in their personal journal with the help of a rubber stamp that's part of the letterbox. In addition, letterboxers have their own personal stamps which they use to stamp into the letterbox's logbook." Copied from Atlas Quest, my favorite Letterboxing website. You can also check out Letterboxing.org for information, clues and how to get started.What my family and I enjoy about letterboxing is that it gets us outside exploring new places, spending time together having fun, exercising, hiking and learning new things. We also love the thrill of the hunt and collecting the handmade stamp images, that usually relate the location where the letterbox was placed, too.
We've met new people and made new friends through letterboxing, especially when attending Letterboxing events, like the Halloween Spooktacular event that took place 2 years ago, hosted by our friends in Santa Fe. It was so much fun letterboxing with other folks who also have a passion for this hobby. (That's me on the left)
Last summer I introduced Letterboxing to my neighbor/horse-riding friend Val~aka~Fiona over at Fantastyk Voyage and she was hooked after the first time. I'm thrilled to have another friend that shares my passion for letterboxing and can't wait until I can walk again so that we can head out on the trails together this summer.
My family is actually planning a trip to Colorado in May and we are hoping to fill our log journal books with many new stamp images from letterboxes we find along the way. You can read more about our letterboxing adventures on my other blog Twins Plus One where I have published almost 100 posts from our past 2 1/2 years of letterboxing.
Have you ever letterboxed or geocached before? Do you hike, camp and enjoy being outside exploring new places?
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From the Tower of,
28 comments :
morning lisa.
enjoyed this post and letterboxing sounds intriquing and something i would love to do :)
hope all is going well with your PT...think of you often and wish i lived closer so i could come on by and chat but, will have to be
content with this mode of communication.
take care and many hugs to you ((())) erin
Just got on and realized - Whoa I'm behind. Just the task of trying to get back to normal has made me behind in visiting your blog and others - Lovely AS USUAL!
you are so inspiring. Keep up the healing lady - I expect your dream will be a reality before you know it (in reference to the My Boy on a Horse post)
BLessings,
Deanna
Yes, letterboxing IS fun! I'm hooked!
Let me know when you're going vacationing and I'll help with all the animals!
We've also got a trip to make to Angelfire and Red River this summer. ;)
Thanks for sharing this. I had never heard of letterboxing until I found your blog.
I've never heard of letter boxing, sounds like a great family activity, thank you for sharing, glad your recovery is going well
That sure was an interesting and informative post. I've never heard of letter boxing. Sounds like great family fun.
I've never heard of this letterboxing and was quite intrigued to read about it.
I haven't done any letterboxing. I love treasure hunts, though. My daughter's university (ASU) recently had a treasure hunt put on by local businesses to make the students aware of services in the area. The students formed teams and dressed up in costumes, then took the rail train all over Tempe searching for items or people listed in clues. I wish my universities did something fun like that. I think treasure hunting on horseback would be fun, except the treasures would need to be at rider height so that you don't have to dismount. You must make a good interviewee, because the paper used most of your quotes.
I have heard of letterboxing (from you :) ) but I honestly had a whole different though about what it was!!! I was SOOO off I can't believe it. I seriously thought letterboxing was (and don't laugh!) like SHADOWboxing, you know, where you buy like a wooden case with a glass front and display things in it for everyone to see. eeep!! I'm so far off. That is really interesting and definitely a great thing to do with the family to get out of the house and explore. How neat!!
It sounds fun & interesting, although I confess, I still don't quite 'get' it. I may have to come out and have you take me on a letterboxing trek. I'm a visual/experiential learner. What can I say?
Lisa, what fun!! Nope, never done it or heard of it until I read it on your post. Very interesting post, by the way, I don't know if it's done anywhere close to me or not. Might have to check into that.
Thanks!!!
Extremely interesting; thanks for the info and the links, will enjoy reading more.
Hope you're feeling better!
I'm logged in under my name but am Thistle Cove Farm -smile-.
I've never heard of letterboxing before but it does sound like fun.
That sounds like a lot of fun! I hadn't heard of it before and unfortunately, there are not letterboxers in Germany. I would be great, though, I love hiking and exploring.
I had never heard of letterboxing! What a wonderful family activity!
Love your "Boy on a Horse" Your pictures brought back memories of many a happy hour spent riding with my children.
I have friends that are very into geochaching (sp?) Most of their vacation time is spent on the hobby and they love to chat about it and recruit new people to join them.
As I was reading your post I was thinking to myself - sounds an awful lot like geochaching!
That's just what I need is another hobby.
What a great post! I'd never heard of letterboxing.
Letterboxing sounds like a fun pastime for everyone. I'm impressed you were interviewed for the paper, now that you're a star I hope your exalted self will still talk to us lowly souls here on the ground.
awesome that your paper had a story on letterboxing! i am so thrilled that you took part in that, i was telling my husband, "you know rapunzel, well, she's a letterboxer!"
we're geocachers but we've been letterboxing a couple times, not counting the hybrids (geocache/letterbox).
i wish i could show you my cache called Stock Users Only because i placed it in the mountains back home for horse people. it was my revenge for all the caches that say "for horses" in the attributes, but are actually on "horses prohibited" trails in the end. agh. so many times i had to leave my horse behind, which i hate to do..so i made this cache for horsepeople "only": ) i placed it in a campground that is a horse camp, and people without horses are not allowed to camp there, hence the big sign "stock users only" at the entrance.
well, i don't live anywhere near there anymore, so i had to archive it.
equus magazine did a story a couple years ago on geocaching on horseback - someone made a site devoted to horsey geocaching. i was pretty annoyed because they basically stole lots of geocaching.com's caches, which is kind of stealing. sorry i can't remember the name of the horsey geocaching site. i'm not confident they really succeeded, because really, how many caches are set up for horsepeople? : )
i've almost got my thousand caches found, and i feel the strain on my man as we can't indulge in his favorite hobby because of our move. soon we'll be geocaching again.... i have hidden a couple here in germany, mean nasty puzzle ones that you have to solve before you can go looking.
now to give a shamless plug for my favorite sport of all: mounted orienteering. all of you lucky enough to live in the united states, if you like treasure hunts on horseback, this is the sport for you. it's a timed event, a competition, and you get a map and compass and whoever finds all 10 hidden things first wins. in 10 years, i won once: ) it's really tough, but such a fun thing to do with horses. and there's horse camping involved, which is always fun.
so, show us your stamp. we've seen val's's horsey one: )
~lytha
I had never even heard of letterboxing before I started reading your blog :o
It sounds fun though!
Thanks so much for visiting my cloud photo and leaving a comment. Much appreciated! I love this photo with the yellow leaves. Looks so great and warm. And you two look happy together!
That certainly sounds like alot of fun and a great family activity. Enjoyed the post.
Learned something new here never heard of that before, thanks for sharing your world.
I've vaugely heard of it but it does sound like fun...olny I would want to do it on my horse!!! is that allowed???
I was just reading about geocaching this morning! Sounds like a lot of fun. Where are you planning on going in Colorado? It's really not too far of a drive from you. (Well maybe it is for some, but I'm used to driving 17 hours to see our family in Oklahoma.)
Hmmmm...so now that you are famous, will you still remember us??? LOL!!!
I have never geocahced or letterboxed, but it is something that I would like to do (thanks to you!!)
You were our inspiration for our first letter box adventure. I can't wait for the next trip. I've even carved a special stamp from an eraser (such a geek).
We are just hunting in our area, but I hope to make it a habit when we travel, too.
See what you started?!
The more I read about it on your blog and Val's, I'm starting to get pretty interested. You're quite the trendsetter. Is there food waiting at the end of each adventure? ;)
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