One of the favorite past-times of ours has been chasing Letterboxes and Geocaches around the world. Now for the newbie, you may wonder what these two things are and how they differ. Both are fundamentally treasure hunts and often they will lead you to some of the most famous locations in the world and some little known but very cool spots. The goal is to find them and to do it without being discovered. In Letterboxing, you are typically only given clues and the payoff is a finding a homemade stamp and a logbook. You use this stamp to log your find in your logbook and then stamp or write your information in the found logbook. You then re-hide the letterbox for the next hunter. Geocaching, on the other hand, involves GPS coordinates and maybe clues as well, so they tend to be the easier ones to locate…but not always. Also, Geocaches will often have a treasure box, where you take a trinket and leave one behind as well as a logbook to record your find. Of course, there are also hybrid boxes where both are combined in one container.
To find the locations, there are websites that you can use to obtain clues for the locations of the hiding places and log your finds. Also, you have the opportunity to contact the owners of the boxes or caches and even create your own. To give you an idea on how prolific this hobby is, in just Davis County Utah (where I am at today) there are 33 letterboxes registered and 403 Geocaches. If you are traveling to New York City, there are 84 Letterboxes and 762 Geocaches. Even in sleepy Yellow Springs, Ohio you can find, 8 Letterboxes and 497 Geocaches. So if you are bored and want to see what the stamp “Daisy visits the Martians 4” by “Kansas Chick unstuck from Ohio” that is hidden in a random Cemetery in New Carlisle, Ohio, looks like; this is how you can do it……(Mike: please, please post a picture) .
According to Oberon_Kenobi (not me), who makes the most difficult clues ever; “Letterboxing started in Dartmoor, Devon, England in 1854 and came to the U.S. because of an article in the April 1998 issue of Smithsonian Magazine. It consists of finding a box through the use of clues, which may be GPS coordinates.” The main site to learn and begin Letterboxing is www.atlasquest.com. Here you can search for letterbox locations and find the clues to locate them. Also, you can create a “trailname” if you like so you can “log finds” and connect with other “boxers”. FYI, I made the last term up…but I think it fits.
You never know what you may find in geocache boxes….these are “travel bugs” which are hitchhiking around the country/world in geocaches.
The website that we use for geocaching is www.geocaching.com. This site is easy to navigate and will provide you coordinates to locate geocaches. Of course, there is an app for this as well …..actually tons of apps! Just download a free one on your phone and you are ready to go! I like looking up the information on the website and then heading to the area to find the treasure. In several areas of the country, local park systems have installed geocaches to get people out on hikes. If you are ever in Polk County Florida (think Disney), check out http://friendsoftheparks.net/TrekTenTrails.html. Of course this is just one park system and we have found many throughout the country that are doing similar things.
This is a fun little hobby and it great to do with kids or if you just want to explore new areas. So consider adding this to your travels…..you may end up discovering things you never imagined were around you.
