New #38: Letterboxing

Letterboxing. Slang for ignoring emails? A style of learning the alphabet? An extreme post office sport? Errr. None of the above.

Actually, Letterboxing is a somewhat-underground scavenger hunt, with clues posted online leading to treasures hidden around the world. It's actually pretty simple. You decipher the hints, which take you on a journey around town to a small box buried somewhere along the way. Inside the box is a stamp and notebook. Your "treasure" is getting to ink the hunt's stamp in your book, and leave your mark in theirs. So it's a pretty simple pay-off - but very fun getting there.

Last weekend Ben and I decided to give it a go ourselves. I went to Letterboxing.org and looked under hunts in our area. There were about a dozen in Fort Collins. Being the sleuths we are, Ben and I chose one with lots of clues. The first clue was "Sail west along the course Sir Francis _______ might have taken." Ben knew this was Drake, so sail along Drake Avenue we did.

A few more clues and turns took us to a park, where we were told to find a watermelon. Now, this was a pretty big park, and we weren't sure how large these watermelons might be. In our search through the park we awkwardly wandered through every picnic area, around trees and often stopped in the middle of the grass to look around. To the families surrounding us in the park, we must have definitely looked like creeps - which I soon realized comes with the letterboxing territory. The entire hunt we made ourselves look painfully out of place, slinking around like we were up to no good. If only they knew we were in search of buried treasure ... which I guess still sounds a little weird.

Soon our creepiness paid off and we found two watermelon sculptures. From there we had to take "a compass bearing of 290 degrees." Hmmm. We were bad explorers and didn't have a compass on us. But Boy Scout Benny is always prepared, so he just downloaded one onto his fancy phone. Even then, we didn't really know how to use a compass (apparently Ben flunked out of Boy Scouts before that badge). So we just guessed and walked the only way we thought might be right.

Ben consulting the clues by the watermelons.

Luckily, our intuition paid off and we "crossed a pink sidewalk three times" as directed before moving on to the next clues. Here we were once again unprepared, as it took us on a hike up into the foothills. With sandals, skinny jeans and a Starbuck's in hand, we were again looking awkward and out of place as we passed the hardcore hikers along the way. But we were on a mission, this time searching for three tall, dead trees.

Off we go up the trail.

About a half-mile into the hike, it wasn't looking good. There weren't any trees - let alone dead ones. Ahh, but that's when we saw the telephone poles, stacked three in a row. Eureka!

Looooook!

To add to the treasure's theatrical drama (most likely not by the author's intent), there was a swarm of hornets buzzing around the poles. The horrifying situation was topped off when we lifted the rocks and three of the bugs flew out from underneath. Scary. But we'd found the box.

The letterbox.

Inside was a cute little book that talked about the prairie dogs that live in the area. A few pages in began the collection of visitors' stamps, which were all pretty cool. Sadly, we were once again unprepared and hadn't brought any ink to make our stamp. So we got creative and used some sticky black goo left on Ben's knife to leave a distorted mark on the page. I also used a rock to indent the paper with our names and the date. Sadly, it seems we're even creeps among letterboxers. But oh well. We'd left our mark to prove we conquered our first letterboxing adventure.

Cute stamps vs. our stamp.