I have contacted someone at Fort Worden and will go meet someone there tomorrow...

The person who responded to my inquiry had this to say:

"We will need to speak with you so feel free to stop in on Sat. Ask for the
on duty ranger and he will talk to you about why we require you to get a
special activities permit for this kind of activity."

I'm sure I will get a whole lecture about 1) preserving the environment and 2) respecting park rules.

Or something. Yippee. I can hardly wait. I just hope it isn't heaps of money to get the permit. I'd really like to plant boxes there. I wonder if they want everyone who looks for boxes there to have a permit, since the finders are more likely to cause problems/damage (not that we do it on purpose, but if you are in the wrong spot and sure it's the right spot and you dig or move something...) than the planters... the finders, after all, have to kind of hunt around for the box... Well, whatever.

Since it is a state park, I will inquire if this same permit applies to other state parks and if so, how to go about getting permits so that our boxes are not pulled in other parks--ahem--should we decide to plant any there.

If anyone has any examples of how environmentally-friendly letterboxers and geocachers are, I'd love to hear it so I can have a list of examples of why these are great hobbies and not trying to flout laws or rules or kill off sensitive plants or whatever.

I wonder if there are any geocaches that have been pulled from the park? If not, I wonder if the parks department finds it easier to pull letterboxes because they don't require one to own a GPS receiver to find them? Wouldn't that be a riot. We'd all have to use coordinates to plant boxes... start at such and such longitude/latitude. From there, go 3 steps to the north and then turn right at the great big tree...

-Candlelight