Southern Indiana Event

Found at local hybrid :)

Last Saturday, the princess and I had a very busy day.  Luckily, we managed to plant a box and look for two hybrid boxes between the many activities going on.

That evening we squeezed in a local letterbox event.  There were 10 or 11 people there and half of them were folks that I had met before.

Southern Indiana Meet, Eat & Stamp

We enjoyed stamping, talking, and eating.  The host planned an activity where they asked everyone to carve a St Patrick's Day stamp.  They locked them in boxes and we had to solve puzzles to get the stamps.  We suck at this kind of thing and didn't get one of the stamps.  Oh well :/

I only took one pic and it is not the best.

October Box of the Month

2015 Pumpkin Carving Party

This weekend we took a break from stamp carving to carve some pumpkins.  We always have a pumpkin carving party with my parents, sisters, and nieces.  This year we also celebrated one of my nieces 16th birthday and she invited a few friends.  Fun was had by all.

I just retired my October BOTM.  It has had a few extra finders lately.  There is a family from Ky and another from Al that has been coming up to Evansville once or twice a month.  They have been finding my boxes for the past few months.  It is nice to have some new finders but I wish they could plant something for me.

Lake near my BOTM

In my previous post I told that I planted a letterbox/geocache hybrid.  Well, it was not approved :(  I was disappointed, frustrated, and angry.  I had to go out pull the box and find a new hiding spot.  I hid it this morning and got word this evening that it had been approved.  I will never plant another geocache again.  Why do they make it so hard?  Oh well, it's over now.

I am feeling lazy and I think next month I will hide my BOTM closer to the trail head.  If we get any snow the locals will thank me.

Waterfall near BOTM

Friday is my 5 year letterboxing anniversary.  I will celebrate with a new box of course.  I wanted to plant it today but Lil Ewok wouldn't cooperate.  We are going to do it first thing tomorrow morning.

May Box of the Month

In April my BOTM box went missing.  I planted our May one at a completely different location and it had less finders.  The original park I was using was centrally located.  Me & my boxing buddy are west siders but I think most of the fair weather boxers are east siders or are from Newburgh, the town just to the east of us.

The new location is the University of Southern Indiana on the west side of town.  Now a few years ago we had some very active boxers in Mt Vernon, the town just to the west of us, but they quit boxing.  However they have recently said that they are back and one of them came to our restaurant event a few weeks ago.  I am surprised (and frustrated) that they didn't get this one.

When Lil Ewok & I planted this box he fell in the water of one of the creeks and insisted that I take off all his clothes.  That's what is going on in the first pic.  The princess went with us to remove the box and they stopped for a minute so I could take a pic.  She wants everyone to know that she is holding a cicada shell.

Oh, well.  The box had only one finder in the month of May but it is on a beautiful trail that is easier for me to maintain.  And I am pretty sure that is has a lot less muggles than the previous location.

Playin Hookie

Last night my oldest son, Lego Clone Trooper, got sick.  This morning his stomach still felt bad so he spent the morning laying around and reading.  When it was time to pick the princess up from preschool he came with me.  We needed to run some errands and I wasn't sure how long I would be gone.

After a little while it stopped raining and we stopped to get some freshly planted boxes.  One was a drive-by and there was a two part series down a muddy trail on the local college campus.  They were both planted by a boxer in the town next to us.  He must have cabin fever because he has planted almost 20 letterboxes this year.

While we were out we checked on one of our own boxes.  I had tried to check on it a few weeks ago but there were just to many people around.  We went back today and the outside was completely covered in mud.  I brought a box to replace it and put it in a different spot.  It was nice to have my son with me to help with the little ones :)

Boxing with the Baby

Daddy's Favorite Princess says that she doesn't like letterboxing so I try to go while she is at preschool.  Someone just planted a box in our city so Lil Ewok and I went to get it.  It was planted a few days ago but we were first finders.  The baby likes going out on my back but I take him off to stamp and that really makes him mad.  After finding the box we walked around for a while looking for a good place to plant a box.  I would like to plant a hitchhiker hostel in this park.

While we were out we did some maintenance on 3 of our boxes and replaced someone else's logbook.  I actually replaced everything but the stamp but I wanted to dry out the old logbook and put it back.  It was in bad shape so I gave it back to the owner and put a new one in the box today.

One of the boxes we did maintenance on today we planted last June for Donut Day.  It has a blue diamond but not many people have found it so we stopped to check on it.  We also checked on a 2 part series that I just worked on back in December.  I stopped then and they were both full of water.  So I replaced everything but the stamps and I moved the second one.  I wanted to check on it after a good rain to make sure it didn't wash down the hill.  They were both in good shape.

We are expecting some very nice weather this week so I will probably go out tomorrow and plant a mystery box.  I went today and took a picture to go with the clue.  I hope other boxers find and enjoy it :)

For the birds

Wolf scouts making bird feeders.

I am a Cub Scout Wolf Den leader and one of the electives in the Wolf book is to plan and lay out a treasure hunt.  Of course I immediately thought of Letterboxing.  There are also electives in their book that are all about birds.  The boys have to identify several birds, make bird feeders, leave out nesting materials, read about birds, etc.  So I had my boys carve bird stamps.

Stamps carved by my Den.  

We had a Pack overnight at a cabin on a local college campus and the boys worked on their bird electives and hid the stamps that they made at a prior meeting.  They really enjoyed making the stamps and hiding them.  I let the boys pick the hiding spots and I wrote up the clues.  The other boys in our Pack liked finding and stamping the stamps.  I will probably make these stamps permanent plants somewhere else on campus because there are already three boxes in this area.  I'm glad that my Wolf's had such a good time learning about Letterboxing.

Fantastic Fall Foliage

We picked up a Hitchhiker and a Flea while we were letterboxing in Cannelton a few weeks ago.  I didn't want to hold onto them too long so I decided to bring them to the University of Southern Indiana. USI has about a dozen boxes that are very popular. I thought that by taking them out there that they would be picked up and passed along quickly.

It is a wonderful time to be out letterboxing in Indiana.  The temp this week has been in the 80s and the leaves are beautiful.

The Princess was a little fussy but the baby is always happy to be out and about.  He did get upset when I slipped and brushed him against a tree with thorns.  I didn't take a look at it until we got back to the car; the poor guy had a scratch all the way down his arm :(  I'll have to be more careful when I'm hauling him around on my back.