Letter boxing

Today the kids and I went on our first letter boxing adventure. It was fun. It was cold out. It was a hike. We got to see some unexpected sights too on the way to the location. We came across a market that reminded us of Tongbak Market in Pyeongtaek, South Korea; weird animal heads and all.

 

I found out about letterboxing from a friend on Facebook. They were letterboxing while on vacation in New Zealand. It looked fun, so I went online to see if there were any near us. Turns out there was one.

Letterboxing is like a treasure hunt. You go online, find one in a location near you, or where you'd like to go, and then print off the clue. With clue in hand, you then embark on the adventure of trying to find the buried "treasure". The treasure is a hidden stamp that you stamp in your notebook. You also carry your own stamp (homemade or store bought) and stamp the notebook (or whatever it is that is hidden with the stamp) to prove that you found it.

We wrote down the date, location and time of the find in our notebook. We then stamped our notebook with the letterbox stamp and each of our own stamps. After that, we stamped our stamps on the burlap that was hidden in the letterbox. Being burlap, we couldn't write our trail name on it, but oh well.

I hope to go on more adventures to find hidden letterboxes. If you are interested, you should check out Atlas Quest, or some other letterboxing website. They are free to join, free to find, and who doesn't like a little treasure hunt every now and then?

I mean, if we can find one in Ankara, Turkey, you can probably find one in a location near you; so go out and start the search!