Frogs and Hitchhikers, oh my!

I haven't been able to post about my knitting because, well, I haven't been knitting!

I have, however, been a letterboxing maniac!!! Randy and I went out on Wednesday and hit up two parks. One we had been to previously, but Randy hadn't made a stamp at that point and neither of us had journals. Lucky for him, I bought him a stamp carving kit from stampeaz.com for Christmas and a nice leather journal!

We went back and got the first two stamps then found a third in the same park. We left there and headed a couple miles up the road to the next park. These two boxes proved to be a little more difficult. We were off in the woods looking for an uprooted tree, but ended up in a broken tree by accident. We searched for a good ten minutes before I said lets move on. We were supposed to be around pine trees, of which I saw none! Sure enough, a couple minutes down the trail were pine trees and the uprooted tree we were searching for!! There was a second box that went with this one. It led us up a hill through this teeny tiny path. It was difficult because it was walled by bushes and roots were protruding from every which way! when we got to the top of the hill, we found ourselves at the top of a cliff overlooking the trees and in the distance was a big lake. It was GORGEOUS!!!! Not only that, but we found our first hitchiker there! All the way from New Hampshire!!

After that we headed to a park clear on the other side of town. We were looking for the statue of the man for whom the park is named. We walked, and walked, and walked and couldn't find it anywhere! We were at it for well over an hour and walked every inch of the park. Finally we had to leave because it was just too dark. We were both perturbed and Randy really didn't want to quit. So, we drove around the outer perimeter of the park, along the main highways, and lo and behold, there was the elusive statue. Needless to say we made it a point to go back the next day. When we did finally find the box, which was cleverly hidden inside a locked wooden box, nailed to a tree and labled "Entomology Study", we were surprised to find a trio of frogs hopping around with the goodies!

Since we were driving out to Bartow to pick up Ant, I found three boxes that were in the area for us to search. We found the first park with no problem, but unfortunately it was a total bust. We were in the exact spot for the clue, there really was no mistaking it. We dug around, we searched under and inside wooden poles, I even climbed to the bottom of a creek that was below the bridge we were at~ NOTHING! We had a woman and her daughter curiously approach us to find out what we were looking for. When we explained the whole letterboxing concept, she was quite interested. Too bad she didn't get to witness a find~ i did feel like we were under pressure with her watching.

We left park number one, feeling jipped. We found the second location quite easily~ too easy really, no challenge. We drove around in circles looking for the trail with the third box. We asked Ant's grandmother to point us in the right direction. Apparently we just needed to head further north of where we were. Ant was quite excited about the idea of finding these boxes. We finally arrived at the trail, hiked about a half mile and into the tree we went. What sucked was discovering that the shrubbery surrounding this tree was filled with sandspurs!! We were all covered. And poor, poor Roxy!!! We've taken her with us the past few days. This time she was an absolute mess! All those sandspurs stuck in her long hair and in between the pads of her paws. It was a disaster!!!

Ant had a blast so we attempted one more find at a rest stop off the interstate just a bit farther north than where we live. Unfortunately the picnic area that we needed to get into was closed at dusk. We must have just missed it since the sun was just starting to go down when we got there.

Today we took Anthony out, again. Randy carved him his own ant stamp and we picked up a small notebook last night. We headed out to Tarpon Springs for a blue diamond box. We were in the exact place that we needed to be. Dug through all sorts of plants in front of an abandoned church right out at the intersection of two fairly busy streets. We were concerned someone would yell at us, especially since a realtor was showing a house just a couple doors down. We never got in trouble, but we never found the box either. We were there for like half an hour.

From there we headed to a nearby park where there was definitely one stamp, and a questionable second box. The questionable box had been reported missing but the owner seemed to think people were in the wrong place. We were definitely in the right place and it was indeed missing! The other box we found no problem.

We rounded out the afternoon in a hoity toity residential part of town where there were three more boxes. Two of the stamps were lame cheesy leaves, with a 50cent price tag still on the back. They weren't very well hidden either. The third was a much better stamp and a slightly more difficult hike (though calling it a hike would be exaggerating). Ant's gotten quite into the letter boxing experience! We're going out again this weekend! Can't wait!!!