On The Trail of a Letterbox

I've been having such a nice visit with my sister.  She flew into Charleston, WV on Tuesday afternoon and we've been doing a lot of talking, walking, and eating ever since.

At some point, she got into a "hobby" called letterboxing.  Don't know how many people are familiar with that - I had never heard of it.  But it's been going on since the 1800's apparently!   The way it works is someone leaves a "letterbox" sequestered away somewhere in the world and posts clues to its whereabouts on the internet site of the group he/she belongs to.  Other letterboxers can search that site for letterboxes that might be in their vicinity or in a place they plan to visit and then try and find them.  If you find one, you open it up and there's a little book where you put your stamp, where you're from, and the date.

So, before she came to West Virginia, Chinch looked to see if there were any letterboxes near me and, by darn, there were!  Yesterday, we had our first search and will do another one today.  Yesterday we had quite a hike up hills, through woods, etc., etc., pretty much freezing cause it was cold!

This photo on the left is where we parked looking back down some of the road we just drove up.  We were way up in the hills at this point.  In the photo on the right, Chinch is started up the stairs towards that observation tower above her.  We had some trouble following the clues to this point, but finally got ourselves on the right track.  From the tower, there were two or three more clues taking you to the point where you think the letterbox should be.  We had to poke around for a while, going downhill over here, back uphill and then downhill over there, and finally...

we FOUND it!!  It really is such fun when you find it - makes you feel very victorious.  And the best part of this find (aside from the fact that we could now go back to the car and warm up!) was that she was the first locator for this particular letterbox. 

So, after stamping and dating the book in the box with her stamp, she then stamps her "finds" book with his stamp.  When her hands are thawed out, she'll add a little note about the search.  I think this was her 22nd find and, of course, as an assistant, it was my very first find.  So, feeling quite chuffed, we started back, stopping at the observation tower to take a couple more pictures.

...a long view of the mighty Ohio River

and, a picture I took trying to give an idea of how high up we were.  If you find the word "here" in red, and then look beside that and above the little red line, that dark little blob is a car on the highway.

All in all, quite an exciting morning and quite a workout for the old legs.  I think the one we're going to try and find today should be somewhat easier.  It's somewhere in Ritter Park and from the sounds of the clues, should be on flat ground rather than up in the hills.  We shall see...

I'm curious, if this was being done back in the 1800's, how it worked.  The internet makes it easy to learn where a box has been hidden and to let the person hiding the box know that you've found it.  But back then, it seems like it would all have been kind of accidental - just sort of coming across one, entering your info in the book and then figuring that at some point the "hider" would be checking the box to see if anyone had found it.  My sister's letterbox group is called AtlasQuest and there's probably more information there on the history of letterboxing which I will read sometime.  Also, if this appeals to any readers, that would be a place you could visit to see if there would be any letterboxes in your area that you could try to find.