Letterboxing Fun

I did a very selfish thing on Sunday. Very selfish. I went to a letterboxing gathering in Olympia instead of staying home to work on the floor. I know I have no room to talk because Greg has done the entire floor by himself with minimal help from me, but I am so sick and tired of the stupid floors. It is so stupid, but I totally HATE that floor. It is always hanging over us like some huge albatross that we will never be rid of. I swear it is starting to take on an evil life of its own. That damned floor keeps us from doing fun stuff, continues to be something that makes Greg hurt more, and is the cause of 90% of the unhappiness in our house. I totally wish we could just pay someone to come in and finish it all for us and be done with it. I don’t even care how much it costs (since we don’t have any money anyway), I just want it DONE!

With that said, I chose to go letterboxing instead of staying home and conceding to the evil floors wishes. It was a terribly selfish thing to do, but it was so fun. The gathering was in Priest Point Park in Olympia, which is about an hour and a half from my house. I left the house about 8:00 and was up there by 9:30 or so. Just before Longview, Melanie caught up to me, and we caravanned the rest of the way together. Once we got to the park started the Flingin’ Flowers series. Got boxes 1 and 2 with no problem, but got stumped on 3. Decided to move on to 4 and got stumped there, too. Good thing about that one is while we were trying to figure out the clue for #4, I spied an interesting pile of sticks behind a tree and found one of the Nail Family’s Fun & Games Series boxes. I love it when you find a box you weren’t looking for. Very nice carvings, with fun clues (even if a few of them needed revising). We moved on to start the Priest Point Park Centennial Series and found #1 in a great place. Took a whole bunch of us to figure it out, though. It was tricky! Finally, another group of us headed off to do the Nail Family’s Fun & Games Series.

All in all I ended up with 10 finds. Also added a bunch of travelers and exchanges to my count. I met so many nice people. It is wonderful to go to a gathering outside your normal group and see new people. I think out of the whole group I only knew 7 or 8 people before I got there (Campfire Lady, Miniles, Aunt Teri, Cats Meow, Maiden, and Tooth Fairy, and the Nail Family). It was great to meet so many new folks. We had a great time exchanging stamps and travelers and chit chat.

The Event Stamp was actually hidden for this Gathering. The clues, written on the tablecloths of each of the picnic tables, were pretty cryptic. I headed out with Campfire Lady & Cats Meow to find it. We did pretty good on the first couple of clues & were standing around looking lost and confused when ClioMouse & Thunderbird came up to us saying they had been off looking for the stamp with no luck and wanted follow us to see how we interpreted the clues. We followed the directions to where we thought it should be based on the cryptic clues and found no box. Eventually, we were joined by a bunch more letterboxers (everyone left at the gathering, basically, that hadn't picked it up yet) all looking for the stamp. Someone went to get Buppster to have HER find it for us, since we had all these letterboxers standing around (oh so casually) completely stumped. She walked over to the same log we figured it should be under and couldn't find it either. We were all SO bummed. Who would have DARED to steal the event stamp -- at the event itself?? The idea! To go to an event and NOT come home with the event stamp? It was unthinkable! ClioMouse was ready to start interrogating every person seen in the area (I do like that girl) and someone went and asked the people at Kitchen #3 if they had seen it. No luck. A great sadness settled over the group. I swear for a few minutes you would have thought someone died.

We were all sadly heading back to our kitchen to grumble about the total unfairness of it all, when M & E (Mike & Elaine) oh so casually strolled over and returned the box to its hiding spot. They had pulled the box to stamp in and did what all good letterboxers should do and moved away from the area to stamp in. By this time the whole gathering was hanging out by the beginning of the trail (which was very narrow and had no place for such a big group to huddle), so we just brought it out to the picnic table and had a nice group stamp in. It was pretty funny.

So that was my selfish day on Sunday. I forgot my camera, so I have no pictures of this event. I’m hoping someone will post some of theirs to one of the websites soon, so I can put a link to it.