Boxing in Illinois

2018 is the year of Illinois Bicentennial.  TeachJR posted an event asking people to celebrate by planting boxes.  I decided that I would do 3 and a bonus *spoilers*.  I carve my stamps, make the logbook, get the boxes together, and plant.  One week later I get a message that 2 of the boxes were missing.  I think this person is crazy, they have to be there.  So I drive an hour back to the park just to check and they were missing.

What do you do?  Retire? Re-carve? I decided to re-carve and add a box to the bunch.  I left 2 boxes on the trail, re-carved, returned to plant, and guess what happened?  One of the first boxes was gone!  I think the park is cursed!  What is with people?  Do they have nothing better to do in rural southern Illinois?  I'm not going back.  I'm done.  Get them while you can because I will not re-carve those.

Last box of the day selfie :)

Did I mention that G-MA and I drove over there today.  I picked her up about 1:30 and we drove an hour to the park.  I grab my bag of boxes and we take off to the trail.  As we walk up to the trail head a family is exiting the woods.  They mention that the mosquitoes are bad and we will need bug spray.

G-MA has some in her bag and we start spraying.  As we are standing there we are attacked by them!  It was worse than yesterday!  G-MA says she is not going.  I run off to plant the boxes that I have re-carved and discover that one of the others is missing :(  Unless someone else plants a few boxes in that park, I will not be back.  It has been nothing but trouble. >:(

My original boxes planted in Ill

When we are done, we head to Grayville.  There were 5 boxes that I needed and 6 that G-MA needed to find.  We start at a cemetery that has 2 new boxes.  We struggle with the planters description of the tree.  We even text someone for help.  I looked in one tree and G-MA looked in another.  We decided to switch and she looks in my tree and I look in her tree and we each find the box the other person was looking for!  It's a good thing we box together :)

We had no problems finding the rest and had an enjoyable ride back home.  For the weekend, we found 29 boxes and left a few hitchhikers.

Fourth trip to Scales Lake

Trail Selfie

Yesterday, G-MA, Daddy's Favorite Princess, and I went back to Scales Lake.  If you don't recall, it was the location of the 2018 GLG.  This was our 4th trip back to the park and we now have all the official boxes planted for the event.  I think there are a few other boxes planted by people who attended the event that we have not gotten.

G-MA and I drove separate to the park and arrived a little before 9 am.  We knew that the first trail we were walking would be long.  I parked my van at the end of the trail and G-MA drove us to the start of the trail.  The weather was beautiful and cool.  We debated if we should wear jackets or not.  We were looking for a Star Wars series and found all of the boxes but one.  There was a bonus, which was nice since we could not find a box.  We also found a geocache close to one of the boxes.  We looked for 16 and found 16.

After the Star Wars series we left for lunch.  We went to a local diner that had a letterbox outside but we had already found it.  Then we went back to the park and tried to figure out where to park the second car for an easy exit of the trails.  We ended up walking in and back out.

Cool fungi 

This time we searched for the Famous in Indiana series.  The temp had risen and the mosquitoes were out in full force.  We struggled to find many of the boxes.  Landmarks had changed in the short period of time and the wording of the clues was often an issue.  The stamp in the first box was missing and there was another box that we could not find.  We ended up with 8 out of 10 in this series.

While we were there I planted a box at a cemetery just outside the park.  This would have been my campsite stamp if I would have been able to camp.  But I was just too busy the weekend of the GLG and it was miserably hot.  After all the boxing we stopped to get ice cream to celebrate G-MAs 10th AQversary and her recent birthday.