We went on a new adventure today.   My sister and Kev had told us about their experiences Letterboxing in Virginia.  I’d never heard of it before, but it sounded like great fun.

It’s kind of like geocaching, except instead of using GPS, you follow written clues.  I found two great websites which list letterbox sites all over the country.  Letterboxing and AtlasQuest.  I went to the website and quickly found several in our area.  They provide you with clues to locate a hidden box which contains a stamp.  Many people handcarve the stamp.  Sometimes there is an inkpad in the box, but we brought one with us and our own stamp.  Once you locate the box, you take the stamp from the box and stamp your own little book.  We bought a small sketchbook to record our letterboxing finds.  We also used our stamp to stamp the book that was with the letterbox.  We had a plain letter b.  We need to get adventurous and carve our own stamp.

David read us the clues.  This was a great first adventure as the box was very near the parking lot where we’d parked.

Davey was right by his side with our little book.

We were directed to a line of pine trees and then to a specific space in between two of them.  Once there, we looked behind a bush and found:

Davey looked behind the concrete block (we checked it, but this would have been more dicey in Oklahoma.  It’s not so snakey here – or at least not so poisonous snakey).

His hand emerged holding the container.

We were all so excited!

We did our recording of information and stamping.

Then it was time to carefully put it back.

This was great fun.  The directions for this clue were great and we had no trouble.  Some of the boxes will involve longer walks or hikes.  I’ve got a couple of relatively short ones ready to go for tomorrow.  I think one will be about a mile walk which should be just about right for Davey.

So I highly recommend this and am so glad I learned about it.  Davey found it to be a great “treasure” hunt, and he is excited to go again.