Does anyone go "Letterboxing"?

[PrincessTigerLily]

Hi all! Was reading through my old clippings of "Family Fun" magazine, and ran across an article about a fun family hobby called "Letterboxing". We are going to give it a try once the weather stays nice and all the residual snow is gone! Seems like a great family activity and right in my budget (totally free once you get your basics: notebook, stamp, and inkpad). Does anyone here Letterbox already???

 

[The Moonk's Mom]

Hi all! Was reading through my old clippings of "Family Fun" magazine, and ran across an article about a fun family hobby called "Letterboxing". We are going to give it a try once the weather stays nice and all the residual snow is gone! Seems like a great family activity and right in my budget (totally free once you get your basics: notebook, stamp, and inkpad). Does anyone here Letterbox already???

I was going to do it last year...but life got in the way. My mom has a friend that does it and really has a blast doing it...that is how I found out about it. I plan on doing it this summer with the kids....that is if I don't get distracted yet again!

 

[KristiMc]

Our family does letterboxing. It's a fun and cheap activity. We also do geocaching, but you have to invest in a hand held gps for this.

 

[PrincessTigerLily]

KristiMc - do you each have your own stamp, or do you use a family stamp?

 

[PollyannaMom]

Went geocaching (similar) with Cub Scouts. It was a lot of fun!

 

[PrincessTigerLily]

Difference of letterboxing v. geocaching...obviously more high-tech, you need a hand-held GPS: how much do those run you? Once you find your target, is it like "stamping in" in letterboxing?

 

[KristiMc]

KristiMc - do you each have your own stamp, or do you use a family stamp?

We have one stamp for the family which is a Mickey stamp -to show our love of Disney.

With Geocaching - when you reach the target there is usually a box that contains a log to sign (no stamp) and there are sometimes little trinkets that you can trade. We usually keep a bag of small toys/items in our backpack to trade. The kids really like this part. Sometimes you will find a geocoin. You then log the coin on geocaching.com and find out where it has traveled from.

We have had our gps for awhile - It is a Garmin etrex - I think you can get them for around $100.

 

[tweedlemom]

We letterbox too. Each member of our family has a different Disney character stamp. We didn't do it much last year, but the year before we did a bunch at the parks and beaches near us. Very exciting for the kids and makes for a nice, inexpensive time out with the family.

 

[asa'smom]

We geocache. But haven't tried letterboxing. Like to try.

 

[PrincessTigerLily]

Any tips for the first-timer? DH is suspiscous and thinks its some big illegal racket!

 

[jenrein]

Am I the only one who has no clue what any of this is?

 

[KristiMc]

Check out these websites.

www.letterboxing.org
www.geocaching.com

Each site has a section on how to get started. If you have never tried either, I would start with letterboxing since you don't need to buy a gps.

 

[lindsmom]

We go letterboxing - did it most of last summer. We use atlasquest.com, although it links with letterboxing.org for most of the clues.

We've planted a few boxes, although I haven't posted the clues yet as I want to make sure they stayed safe over the winter. It's a wonderful cheap activity to GET OUT OF THE HOUSE! Also, we live in a touristy area so while other people are enjoying their vacations during the summer, we avoid them and go letter boxing

DD7 loves finding the boxes - like going on a treasure hunt!

We don't even have a stamp yet for ourselves - we just sign in the books, with our first names and the town we're from, maybe a comment about the search we went on...

 

[brie182]

We did a few letterboxing hunts last year. It was lots of fun. Here is a video we made of our adventure http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgUnPd9BvXU