Welcome to my blog!

We stumbled onto letterboxing in an interesting way. (To learn about letterboxing, click the link in the sidebar for the LBNA Website.) In November 2003, Eric, and I spent a weekend hiking in the Catskills. We had a fantastic hike to Kaaterskill Falls and when we got home, wanting to find more information about the local lore of this neat site, we started searching on the Web. One of the most interesting links we stumbled upon was the clue page for the Kaaterskill Falls letterbox.

We were so excited to see that we had been only feet away from a hidden treasure! We found out more about letterboxing and determined that after the holidays and when weather became a little less cold, we would give it a try.

Strangely enough, in February 2004, I was browsing my local bookstore and came across a new book on letterboxing "The Letterboxer's Companion", by Randy Hall, so I picked it up and we immediately started preparing for our first search. We set out on Valentine's Day and found our first box - a mystery box!

As a special treat, we returned to Kaaterskill Falls in April to get what we did not leave with last time!

Since February, we have become letterboxing addicts - always coming up with new ideas for letterboxes. Of course, we've been a little slow turning our fun ideas into actual planted boxes, but we'll get in gear soon! We are planning to plant our first box within the next week or so, the stamp is carved but not yet mounted, the logbook is still undecorated, and the exact location and clues are still unset, but we will plant!

We sent out a lovely little hitchhiker, Fortune Cookie, in April. This HH was inspired by the chinese dinner we shared on the evening of our first find. Hopefully, we'll hear about its travels someday!

Our letterboxing activities slowed considerably during the months of May and June, as I was going through first trimester zombie syndrome. That's right, we're expecting our second child on Christmas Day! Our daughter is 14 now, and it's been so long since I was pregnant that it feels like the first time! After complaining to my mom that I didn't remember being SO TIRED with my first pregnancy, she reminded me that I'm "much older now" !!! That's just what I needed! I'm not really that old - only 34, so I can't really complain. Happily, my energy returned in full force by the beginning of July and we are speeding along again! I'll be posting thoughts as we await the birth in the "awaiting baby" link.

We were so lucky to get to attend the Washington Crossing Gathering on July 10, and get to meet so many creative and fun fellow boxers. I'm really looking forward to more gatherings, and am so excited about the creativity in this Mid-Atlantic region of letterboxing. Lightnin' Bug has a Great Hitchhiker Race in the works (we haven't yet figured out what our racer will be, maybe "The Heart of Gold" from the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"), and Irene of Hikers and Hounds has just suggested a great series tentatively called "Battle of the Bands." Now I've got to figure out how to pay tribute to my favorite band, Steely Dan, in stamp form - an excellent challenge!

Other letterbox ideas in the works -

"Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged" who may travel the letterboxing universe distributing or collecting insults.

Some sort of series based on the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Caite is working on a series based on a fractal, perhaps Sierpinski's Triangle.