On Drivebys and Lazy Letterboxing

Ordinarily, I'm just not a big fan of drive-by letterboxes. But, that's because ordinarily I think they're done rather poorly. Too often, there's a box hidden in a bush at the edge of a parking lot (sometimes on private property). There's no rhyme or reason to WHY it's there, and the whole point is to get in and out as quickly as possible. You wouldn't want to stop...because there's nothing to see that you couldn't see a million other places.

There are exceptions to this. FFFF near Chattanooga ranks as one of my favorite boxes ever. And it's a drive-by. It's just so enchanting, a totally unexpected little gem of a surprise. And the clues are fun too. As was the hiding mechanism. Really, it had it all.

When you're on a road trip, a quick find (as long as it's at an interesting location or at least somewhere you can stretch your legs) can be a wonderful thing!

We found a nice box yesterday, part of the Clear Lake Celtic series, that was a drive by. But, on an unbelievably sticky day, the little teeny pocket park where it was planted was like an oasis. We all gave that one a thumbs up (the pout on my younger son's face has nothing to do with the park and everything to do with having his picture taken).

And to be fair, I have planted drive-bys myself. I have a straight-forward one in Kerrville at this charming tiny park right on the water. And Houston's so hot & humid in the summer that long walks (particularly with children) are hard, unless you're up at the crack of dawn. So I did plant some around town--primarily mysteries, where the hard work of the box is in the figuring out the location, but the retrieval is simple. I'd like to do a few more like this, but I haven't been in that much of a planting or puzzle-figuring mood recently. Luckily, we have a few new active planters, so we've been able to enjoy finding some great boxes. I'm sure we'll be back to planting soon.

So, although I don't get into the vast majority of drive-by boxes, what I am a big fan of is a sort of Lazy Letterboxing. For us, this means taking our time and enjoying what we see, along the way...rather than hurrying to the next box. We may stop for an impromptu snack along a lake and just watch the water, climb trees for an hour, skip stones, hunt the perfect hiking stick or watch two birds dive and circle each other or turtles lazily swim. The reward to this letterboxing approach is usually something interesting or unique along the way--like this fungus high in the tree we spotted at a park in Baytown.

Lazy Letterboxing means that you can't find all the boxes on your list...that you have to throw out the goals and the agenda...and be satisfied with finding fewer boxes than you know you could. But we've found through experience that sometimes less is a lot more.