Crystal Beach

The kids were at their grandparents' home in St. Louis, being spoiled rotten (of course), so Asterix and I decided to take a little road trip last Sunday. We always have such fun just meandering around seeing what we can see and not really worrying about time.

Luckily, Tejas Angel had placed several boxes on the Bolivar Peninsula, so we got a relatively early start, drove down to Galveston and took the ferry over. We planned on doing a large loop, coming back up through Anahuac National Wildlife Reserve and then perhaps going a bit further north to Liberty.

We had one short rain shower after the ferry ride, but for the most part, we just enjoyed the drive. There are three letterboxes on the island, so we had several stops along the way.

Our favorite stop was probably the one at Old Fort Travis Park, where we found the aptly named Old Fort Travis letterbox. This historical site consists of four different Batteries, developed to defend Galveston Bay from enemy attack. These bunkers were built at differing times, from before the Spanish American War (1898) up through World World II. The picture above is of the last bunker, built during WWII to defend against Axis invaders. One of the original batteries was pretty well destroyed during the 1900 hurricane, but the ruins are still there, as are those of the other original battery. The one below is of Battery Kimble, built between the World Wars. You can see that the ocean side is earthen (to disguise them from the enemy), with the front made of concrete and steel. The original bunkers had the guns mounted on the top, but after air attacks became more common, defense strategies changed and the gun mounts were moved to the sides of the batteries. There is a nice loop trail at the park with historical information at each kiosk. We were the only people walking around, most people were either fishing, picnicking or grilling.


Anyway, this is a fun kind of letterbox for us, one that shows us a bit of history, especially when we weren't expecting it. Asterix is not a letterboxer at heart, but he is usually game if the location is interesting or if there's a good hike involved. He's very patient about helping everyone stamp in, no easy feat with all the different logbooks and stamps involved.

We did make it to the Anahuac Wildlife Preserve (no gator sightings to report), but not all the way to Liberty. Another day, another drive!

We'll be heading off later this week for our road trip to South Carolina & big family birthday party at the beach (yes it's true, Dewberry is turning 40). I may check in from the road or not, we'll see how everything goes.

Czech Stop

Just a little post to mention how much we enjoyed the Czech Stop in West, Texas where we stopped for lunch on our drive home from Fort Worth. Stargazer planted a letterbox at this gorgeous gazebo, but the real reason to stop is the kolaches and sausage at the Czech Stop. The stamp in our logbooks is just a great reminder of a wonderful lunch.

The Force Was With Us

A couple of weeks ago, we road tripped up to Fort Worth to see the Science of Star Wars Exhibit. It's on its last stop, and this is one exhibit we really wanted to see. All four of us loved it, for different reasons. I loved seeing the models that were used to make the original trilogy. Asterix was fond of the real-life applications of the Star Wars technology. Mushroom Hunter dug the robotics (he spent ages playing with them) and Baby Turtle loved the audio tour.

While in Fort Worth, we had the chance to go to the Botanic Gardens and letterbox. The gardens are open late, until sunset (although the Japanese Gardens close earlier). This gave us the chance to stroll around when it wasn't so HOT!

There are lots of stunning letterboxes at the park, but we particularly enjoyed Puddle Splasher's Artist Series. Van Gogh's Sunflowers, Monet's Water Lilies, and O'Keefe's Poppies seemed particularly at home in this setting. It's a magnificent pairing.

After a while, the boys' patience ran out, so we left a few letterboxes unfound and went off for ice cream.

I've found that it's much better for my long-term letterboxing prospects if I'll stop before I'm ready, but when they are. We had so much fun in Fort Worth (I also got to do the Cattle Pen Maze that was in The Amazing Race 5, the one won by Chip & Kim. Apparently I wouldn't be as good at that as I thought as my older son beat me by 10 minutes, but he ran while I strolled) that we definitely plan to return.

Maintenance & Mumblings

I've had some bad box reports recently...

• Pirate's Puzzle has been co-opted by geocachers, with the stamp gone. This one was in place before the geocache (for over 2 years) and had happily co-existed with the cache for a long time. But, all it takes is one geocacher who doesn't know about letterboxing, and all the labeling in the world won't save your stamp.
• Georgie and the Dragon, a short series, was swept away in the recent Spring Creek Flooding. I'm torn about whether to replace it or not. The clues were in story form, and a favorite for kids. But, I often put new boxes out when others go so that the loyal letterboxers in this area will have something new to find. I have fears for some other boxes along Spring Creek, but am not sure when I'll get out to check on them. My kids aren't keen on letterboxing in 95 degree weather.
  
• Abita Beer is gone too, lost to park redevelopment. This is one I really struggle over whether to replace or not. It's located 6 1/2 hours from my house, so it's not one I'm going to get to very often. There just aren't that many letterboxers in the area. But, the box survived Hurricane Katrina and the downed trees in the area, and lasted for almost a year in a temporary spot due to a park closure. And, the park where it is located is an idyllic little spot, with the added draw of the brewpub next door. I just love the placement. And it so happens that we'll be back by there in about 3 weeks. I'm leaning towards replacement, but will have to rely on the kindness of others for maintenance help. There are lots of schools of thought about whether long-distance box placement is a good idea, and I've never really made up my mind one way or another.
  

Anyway, I braved mud & mosquitos to check on these boxes today: Surrender Dorothy!, Magical Mystery Tour and Stop and Look are all where they need to be. A couple finders have been working on Dorothy, so far to no avail (no finders since last December). Dorothy is the box that has given a lot of people fits, so I wanted to make sure the final reward was in place. Two of the boxes need new containers, but their contents were nice and dry in spite of the rain. The log housing MMT has started to degrade, so I'm going to consider moving that one. But, it's been returned to its hiding space for now.

I went to another section of Memorial Park to check on Team King's birthday boxes and another mysterious box with hard-to-find clues. However, when confronted with a lake of ankle deep green algae, I let the heat win and decided to check on them another day.

Return of an emeny

It's baaaack!
For 37 years I thought I was immune to the effects of poison ivy. Every summer, my sister and I would go to a kids' camp in the Missouri Ozarks. She would return with a bad case, itchy, blistered and miserable. Me? Not a rash or a blister. Our family camped and hiked through dozens of National Parks, canoed on the Jack's Fork every summer....and still...no reaction. I continued hiking as an adult, in and out of the forest often. I never worried about it and took absolutely no precautions.

And then, I started letterboxing (and going off trail). Somehow, I am assuming from repeated exposure, I developed a sensitivity. The first time was a big shock as it took me a while to figure out what the rash on my legs was. I've had it a few times since then. Recent news reports of the fact that Poison Ivy is becoming more potent have filled me with dread.

Last summer was the worst. I wanted to get a box hidden in a log completely covered in PI vine. I was by myself, so I used a stick to remove the box, and one to put it back. But, probably the box itself was coated with urushiol. Anyway, I washed my hands when I got home, but I hadn't realized that I had touched the back of my head. The ensuing rash all over the back of my scalp and neck left me itchy and miserable for weeks (I wore pigtails to try and keep air on the scalp). I didn't letterbox for the bulk of the summer.

This year's version is mild, mainly limited to my right forearm (can you see me reaching down to get the box and brushing a plant? ). Thanks to liberal applications of my friends tecnu, zanfel, ice and calamine, the itch is down to a dull roar. And as it is so localized, I am far from miserable, mainly just irritated and trying hard to remember not to scratch.

Poison ivy can spring up quickly, and a previously free area can become a dense patch during the summer. As a result, I've been known to give up on a box and plan to return during the more-dormant winter instead. However, a lot of planters were like my old self, and don't know how to recognize it. Do me a favor, and visit this site...learn to avoid the leaves of three when you're planting!

In some ways, this noxious plant is kind of fascinating. It's quite simply amazing how different poison ivy plants manifest such different looks, depending on the season, the climate and the plant variation. In Houston, we have lots of vines on the trees. A great rule to remember about vines: if it's hairy, it's scary! Even in the winter...a tree hosting a vine with lots of exposed roots (resembling a shaggy beard) should be avoided.

In the meantime, pass the calydryl!

Letterboxers Incognito

First the good news: the temperatures are low. In the 80s in Houston in July! Virtually unheard of weather.

So then the bad news: rain, rain, rain...lots of it and more today. All this rain = slop & mud & mosquitos! (and lung issues). This makes letterboxing and hiking somewhat unpleasant. Much easier to sit around the house and read or play MLB baseball.

But, there's some additional good news (this would be the third hand if you're keeping track). In some ways this deluge is good for our letterboxing adventures. As you can see from the photo above, the boys have become very interested in mycology. We have about 4 different books about mushrooms & fungi, which they avidly study. The kids are very interested in outings where they can also mushroom hunt (our version of hunting is to photograph and try to identify the species we find. We don't pick). Of course, I may choose parks & trails that "just happen" to have letterboxes too. And all that rain has led to a myriad of species, just waiting to be found. Jellies, bunches, fairy rings, chanterelles, puffballs, slimes...we're searching for them all!

And this leads to good letterboxing practices. We have no need to make up excuses for why we're poking around in the woods. If ever confronted or observed, we have our books and our photographs. We are letterboxers incognito, disguised as fungi fanatics!

These photos were all taken at Little Cypress Creek Preserve, only open weekends.

Texas Sea Turtles (and a few boxes too)

We took a pre-Fourth break and headed to Galveston Island for a quick respite. The rain followed us there, but it wasn't thundering when we arrived, so the kids were able to swim in the pool for hours. After dinner, the skies cleared and we strolled on the beach. Being near the ocean is always so calming. Unless you're 9 years old, when it is an opportunity to run around like mad.

Today was nicer, so we hit the beach, then the pool, then the seafood house. After lunch, we toured the NOAA Fisheries Sea Turtle Facility. This is a very interesting tour, where you can see the Kemp's Ridleys and the Loggerheads being housed until they are big enough to be released into the wild. The Kemp's Ridleys were all hatched on Texas beaches, and each of them is missing part of a flipper. When they're bigger, they can be released and will compensate. The Loggerhead pictured above is 3 years old. In the wild, it would not be nearly as large, but in the fishery, they are fed an ample diet and the water is warm enough that they grow all year, rather than the six months they do in the wild. The Loggerheads are all from Georgia, and were imprinted on that beach, so they must be rereleased there.

The 2007 hatchlings haven't arrived yet, so these turtles were all between one and three years old.

This doesn't have much to do with letterboxing, unless you count that I have a now missing Kemp's Ridley box. But cool nonetheless.

We did find letterboxes at two rather neat locations: Seawolf Park and Kempner Park. The one at Sea Wolf Park celebrates the SS Selma, one of 19 concrete ships constructed in 1919, now sunk off Galveston Island. I'm glad someone planted a box so we would see it.

You can't make stuff up as interesting as real life.

La, la, la…I can’t hear you!

Another rainy Sunday (and a weird rain, more like a wintery, dreary day than our usual flash-flooding summer downpours)…so I’m sitting here writing a piece for a client. There are just so many ways that you can say “maximizing your return on investment.” Adding to the annoyance, this client favors big words & fancy language, not crispness and clarity, so it’s a particularly tedious piece. Therefore, my mind wanders.

On AQ, Ryan has a feature called ignore member. You can go in to someone’s profile and decide they don’t exist. Better yet, you can set the level of ignore, based, I guess, on how annoying you find them. Do you just not want to see their boxes? Check! Not receive any mail from them? Double Check! Make their message board posts not appear? Triple Check!

I just love this idea. And I wish Ryan could wave his magic reptilian wand and make it happen in real life too:

• Another phone call from your mother about how you HAVE to go to Cousin Sally’s wedding to the circus performer because otherwise everyone will think you’re fat and divorced?…No problem, you have your mother set to “no nag” – you can’t even hear these words. Family harmony is restored!
• Imagine… no uber-long, much-forwarded emails in your inbox from your father-in-law about the latest cancer scare or dangerous computer virus because you have him on the “can’t be bothered to check out Snopes” filter.
• And I’d set the president of the PTO on “no volunteer jobs.” I won’t say yes if I never hear them asking.
• But best yet? Until the kids appear before you bloodied and bruised, you don’t realize that they’re fighting…because they’re on “rainy day nitpicking fights with your brother” ignore.

In reality, I don’t have anyone set on ignore on AQ, as tempting as it can be. It sort of smacks of censorship, and certainly seems divorced from reality. I tried it with one person who really irks me with her bold pronouncements, but I changed it back after a few minutes. I felt guilty about using the feature.

The last week, I’ve gotten into a couple of minor tiffs with people, mainly over stupid stuff. I ignored my own cardinal rules of posting, which are 1. Never post if you don’t feel well (I had a pounding headache one day) and 2. Never, ever get in a back-and-forth discussion with that small select group of people who HAVE to have the last word. They won’t let it go, and I’ll just end up mad. There seem to be more of them roaming around than ever before, but I think that’s a simple function of the growth of AQ. My biggest guideline is that people don't need to hear from me more than once on a subject.

Letterboxers come in all stripes and colors, with all sorts of backgrounds, past experiences and lifestyle choices. This is part of what makes this hobby great—we all come together with a shared interest in one thing (and that we all approach differently), but those unique differences result in something for everyone. You just can’t expect that every box (and every boxer) are going to be a match for you.

There are many people out there who can’t seem to acknowledge that there are multiple points of view… people who believe solely in absolutes. I feel like I live my life in the shades-of-grey middle. When you’re there, you have to try and get along with both ends. And ignoring their existence doesn’t help you learn how to do that.