Unexpected Treasures

Yesterday, my friends and I went on a treasure hunt.  It's called "letterboxing" and we heard about it through the Lime & Violet podcast, alas now extinct.  Anyway, it's sort of like low tech geocaching, if you know what that is.  :)   With geocaching, you look for gps coordinates where someone has hidden a small prize.  You take the prize and leave one in its place for the next finder.

Instead of gps coordinates, letterboxing uses verbal clues to lead you to the location of a hidden notebook.  Each notebook has a special stamp -- preferably handmade.  You take with you your own personal stamp and stamp it in the found notebook with the date of your find.  Then you use their stamp to stamp in your personal notebook as a record of the find. 

My handmade stamp is "Bad Penny," for obvious reasons.  Lynne's is an "e" symbol because she always has to explain to people that her name is Lynne, with an "e."  Kerry's stamp was a lovely tree.  For my notebook, I'm using a handmade journal that Judy Dominic made. It's so beautiful, perfect for this special use.

Although I tried one time, I never found anything, so all three of us were letterboxing virgins yesterday.  It was a lovely day and letterboxing was a great excuse to be outdoors in it! 


  For our first adventure we chose "N.L. Central," which apparently stands for National League Central. Who knew?  There were six letterboxes with a baseball theme all located within Highland Cemetary in Ft. Mitchell.   We followed the clues and found every one of them!  Yay us! 

Kerry puts the notebook back into its waterproof container



Lynne makes another find



Lynne stamps into a notebook



Not only that, but I found two other treasures.  Near one of the finds, just laying in the grass, I found a shed antler.  I've never found anything like that before.  It looks like the fellow who lost it was a six point buck.  It has an amazing feel to it -- different than anything else -- heavy and smooth and wild. 



A little later on, I saw a piece of paper on the ground and picked it up.  It was a cancelled check from 1991 belonging to a woman in Henryville, Indiana, where fierce tornadoes levelled the town last week.  The storm carried that bit of paper 100 miles away from her house to land in Ft. Mitchell, KY.  Her address is on the check, so I'm going to send it back to her and tell her where it was found.  I hope she still has a house at that address. 



So, we had an eventful time and I hope we do it again soon.  We're already planning to plant our own letterboxes -- I think we're hooked!