Extra Sweets

For an extra sweet during the candyland adventure, find the bike rack near the Post Oak Pavilion. Hanging by magnets will be an extra goodie.

Meeting at Mercer

Hanging out at the Lily Pond at Mercer

We snuck over to Mercer yesterday to meet with some visiting boxers from Canada and to pre-hide a couple of boxes in advance of the SugarPlum event coming up later this month. Here's one of our rejected Holiday Card photos (squinting in the sun), but you get a nice view of the blooming water lilies.

Clever boxers know to check the blog in advance of an event and this is no exception. I should have a special box, the honey pot, with clues available only here. Hoping to hide it on Thursday, December 21, so check back after that date.

Today we were supposed to go letterboxing in Brenham, but the weather and the littlest one's setback from his tonsillectomy are preventing that.

Literary Traveler

I thought I'd do a second literary traveler and see who stumbles across the clues. Find me at the Great Book Adventure and ask for this one.

From taming the wild land to overcoming a tragedy under the mulberry tree, this heroine proves herself much stronger than the men around her. In the end, love wins out, but only on her terms.

"There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before."

The Biggest Tree

Here's Batrick, letterboxing in Lafayette, LA. This tree is thought to be 500 years old.

Ninja Letterboxing

The ninja letterboxers finding the box of legos letterbox. . .

Hill Country Mysteries

Back from a weekend in the Texas Hill Country. We were able to find 7 letterboxes and we hid four:

Lulling in Luling
Potted Cactus
#36
Texas State of Mind

Two of these are mystery boxes, so you get a big hint if you read the blog (at least you know where in Texas we were). Neither of them is that difficult, but I have been feeling that our overall mystery box count is low in Texas and we should have a few more.

The kids loved hiking in Kerr-Schreiner Park, once a Texas state park and now operated by the City of Kerrville. They called it Porcupine Forest because the trees looked like porcupines to them. They'd like to go back and plant a porcupine box, so hopefully one day we will!

I had a box ready to hide at The Old Tunnel Wildlife Management Area, but when we were there waiting for the bat emergence, there was really no where to hide it. So, I'll have to figure out what else to do with that box. . .that's the problem with creating boxes before you've actually been to the hiding spot.

The Great Book Adventure Gathering

TeamKing and I are cooking up some letterboxing gathering fun. We're planning a book-themed literary adventure. The offers for stamp donations are pouring in and we're looking for a great time in the company of some of our favorite people (letterboxers) and things (books).

Click here to see details for
The Great Book Adventure

I've already carved a number of stamps, and they are relatively detailed and intricate. I have created Amelia Bedelia, Nancy Drew, Elizabeth & Darcy, and The Little Prince. I am going to add a scene from Little Women, The Phantom Tollbooth, Pippi Longstocking, Tom Sawyer, and more as they come to mind. Look for updates!

Postage Stamp Mystery Boxes

All of our postage stamp boxes are mystery boxes. The stamps are all replicas of USPS-issued stamps. We have a lot of fun with these boxes and try to make the clues interesting, challenging and fun.

Our original box, planted last June, A Little Stamp Mystery, is now missing. Still around are Oscar! and Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron. We did add another yesterday to the fold, the Magical Mystery Tour. Look for more in this series as well.

From the above spot, go 28 steps to two stumps in the middle of the trail. Continue on to the next signpost. Follow the top arrow to a stump. Behind that stump is a log. Box is underneath the log, one foot from the end on the stump side.

Baseball Season = Less Boxing

Both Gramatrick boys are playing baseball this year, so that regrettably cuts significantly into our boxing time.

However, we were able to get out today and find 3 boxes (and plant another). I'm not telling which ones we found because that would give too big of a hint to the location of our new mystery box Oscar! Oscar! is one of our postage stamp boxes--joining A Little Stamp Mystery with the Red Baron coming soon. All of these stamp squared boxes will be mystery boxes in one form or another. I'm using a new encryption method for the clues for Oscar!--interesting to see what people think.

Overall, it was a great day, with lots of stick collecting, bug watching, creek wading and rock throwing.

Alien Logic Bonus Clue

We planted a new letterbox today, called Alien Logic.

Here are the clues for the bonus box:

Bonus: Na Namovio--Waltump galor julgo.

Upcoming boxes

We're working on a number of different letterboxes. Batrick wants to do one based on the Secrets of Droon, his favorite juvenile Sci-Fi series. The stamp has been designed, mom just has to carve it. He also has been requesting that we hide some more math-based boxes, his favorites.

I am about to debut Alien Logic, a linguistic logic puzzle. Asterix would like to take Alien Logic to the next step, and make it a linguistic grammar puzzle. He's in charge of that! We also have Oscar!, another mystery box, ready to go, with maybe a few other surprises up our sleeves. I am planning on doing some more difficult boxes, but I will consider posting a few hints here.

I have also been ruminating recently on new ways to deliver clues. I think that we've planted plenty of letterboxes, some easy, some harder. I would like to continue to challenge those around us. That's one reason I have revived this blog, after letting it sit unattended & unvisited for 8 months.

Look here for some new clues.

The picture above is of Asterix, GPillar & Batrick. We are letterboxing in San Diego over Thanksgiving break.