Took the second half of today and went to check out Utica Reservoir and pick up the New Hope letterbox. A gorgeous spot in the granite Sierra, and the box has a great location atop an astounding chunk of rock, with a spectacular view. I didn't realize till I found it, however, that it is a hybrid geocache/letterbox. I think it is the first of its kind that I have found. Holy moly, batman, what a junkfest!!!! The following is an inventory of what I found inside the pint-sized Tupperware:

-one piece of clear flexible tubing, wrapped into an elaborate knot
-a logbook in a baggie with three rubber stamps (I guess they put a new one in every year; one was commercial, two handmade, the latest (and best) broken into three parts)
-a pencil (with the end stuck into of the stamps)
-a receipt from Big Trees Market for $3.20 (memo book, shoe polish)
-a Rumi poem on a scrap of a watercolor with a dangle pearl earring safety-pinned to it
-one small packet Tempo tissues (now those could come in handy)
-a business card for an LCSW in Murphys with a date & time handwritten on the back (time of box visit or appt reminder?)
-a roll of 35mm film in its cannister (exposed?)
-an eraser shaped like a basket of flowers
-a white golf tee
-a whittled piece of wood with four names written on it in pencil
-two dice (one red, one black)
-a red & white fishing float
-four band-aids (one Scooby-Doo)
-a yellow Happy Face magnet
-a pin-back button: three yellow stars on a red ground
-a little brown rubber squid thing ("The Flying Lure")
-another litle yellow & red rubber thing with two tails
-52 cents in six coins
-a plastic button

YIKES!!!!!!! I say let geocaches be geocaches and letterboxes be letterboxes. Also, one group of visitors--a "noise punk keyboard art band" and presumably the purchasers of the shoe polish--decided they would use the shoe polish for stamping in, so there were stray bits of black gook left here and there and clinging to one of the stamps. Yukky mess. Please don't visit my boxes. The location really overrode all of these considerations, but they convinced me that I vote no on hybrids. "Nuff said.

I'm very happy to have my stamp back, thanks to Q. I hope you're all getting out for plenty of summer boxing! (and avoiding poison oak, sunburn, biting insects and stamp loss!)

aT