Picking Boxes

For boxes on our home turf, we'll get around to trying to find them all at some point. There are not enough free weekends or days to find them all, but I do a decent job keeping up. If you plant more than one box in our area, we'll definitely find one of yours at some point (sometimes the singletons go missing before we can find them).

But, we do some of our best boxing outside our home county. On the road, the possibilities are just so enthralling--what's around the next bend? When I'm planning a road trip, I try to work in things that we all enjoy--a brewpub for Asterix, rock scrambling or exploring for the boys, letterboxing for me! And, if there's a somewhat-nearby diner known for its mile-hile pie, we've been known to drive more than a little out of our way too. (Someday I'll write the Roadtrippers Guide to Pie.)

There are two kinds of road trips...the kind where you're trying to get somewhere, like a vacation destination, and you have a pretty set route. You can't deviate too much or you'll never arrive where you're going. And then there's the kind of voyage where the road trip itself is the vacation, and the whole point is to tool around seeing sites and exploring. Although I'm fond of both types, the tooling-around road trip is something I truly love.

We went on a three day wandering trip to East Texas. In the year and a half since we'd been in the general area, there has been a box explosion! Trying to decide which boxes to attempt is difficult when there are so many.

Here are some of the criteria I use.

Location: Reading clues, I love it when a planter shows me the true gems of their area. Of course, I want to hit the hot spots (and it's great when there's a box somewhere we'd want to go anyway), but I love it when there's one hidden at a local treasure that isn't on the beaten path.

Planter: Have I found some of your boxes and enjoyed them? Then, I want more! Have I found some of your boxes and not had an enjoyable experience? Maybe your clues are unnecessarily confusing, the locations kind of so-so, or there's something just flat about the experience. If that's the case, I'll probably take a pass. And, if there's only one box by a specific planter, it often means that they dabbled a bit and letterboxing didn't really take. Experience has taught me to avoid those, as I think it takes a bit of planting before you figure out what makes a decent box.

Distance: My boys like to hike (as do we), so we are happy to have a nice walk for a box. But, when you're traveling, every box can't be a hiking box. We mix it up a bit. Even for drive-bys, I like them to be in interesting, unique locations if at all possible (although everyone likes a rest-stop box sometimes).

History: I am a total sucker for a box with a good story.

Variety: In a completely new area, I try to find boxes by as many placers as I can. I like "getting to know" people through their boxes...and I'm not likely to want to stop and exchange when I'm traveling through. I let your boxes be my small glimpse into you and your personality. I like to look at my logbook and see carvings by different people and their completely different styles. It's like a book full of mini postcards from the road.

Of course, even with that criteria, I end up with a pile more clues than we can manage. I make decisions on the spur of the moment, based on time and the moods of the people in the car, about what we'll be attempting. So, it ends up being pretty random which boxes we attempt in the end.

One reason I like driving and taking your time is that there's the stuff that happens that you don't expect.

When we arrived at Martin Dies, Jr. State Park at 2:15, there was a sign up that said there was a snake feeding at 3pm. Well, we had to stay for that! We managed to find a box that had survived Hurricane Rita in a recently re-opened section of the park, and then it was back to the nature center for the feeding.

From the looks on the boys' face, they found it pretty fascinating.

Unfortunately, it meant we had to curtail our boxing a bit, but I loved visiting Martin Dies and I'm sure we'll be back. But really, a snake feeding isn't something you get to see everyday, so that was well worth the trade-off in boxing terms.

From here, it was on to Lake Sam Rayburn, just before a beautiful sunset at dusk, to find petrified wood.

Really the highlight of that day? Being able to catch my youngest son's shoe before it floated off into the lake. I was pretty proud of that, especially as I realized I didn't have an extra pair of shoes. One thing we definitely learned about rockhounding is to wear old shoes!



Here's our load of petrified wood.




In the comments section, I'd love to hear how you pick your boxes when traveling.