I did a little boxing while on vacation in Northern California and Southern Oregon.

Our first stop was the Ide Adobe in Red Bluff, CA. I found the hiding place pretty easily but the rangers were in the next room. I sent my wife and mother-in-law to distract them while I made the grab. By the time we finished stamping in, the rangers were gone so I had no trouble returning the box.

Next stop was a couple of days later. We were the first to find the Magic Rabbit box. That was a very unique hiding place. It's the first box I've heard of that was only accessible from underground. (Feel free to correct me if I am wrong.) Make sure that your flashlights are in good shape. We had two, one of which was pretty underpowered. The other was one of those 20,000 watt lights that is supposed to last for about 20 minutes with a full charge. I plugged that sucker in and charged it all night the night before. We had just got around the second where we were entering complete darkness when it started to go out!!! We had to pick our way though with the weak flashlight. Fortunately, the signs have reflectors on them so it is easy to see where you need to go.

The first finder award had a neat paper piecing of a rabbit. I paper-clipped it into my LB journal on the same page as the stamp.

The next day, we found Tiger-in-the-Wood after searching in two wrong stumps. Someone had been there the day before and had got the first-finder for that one.

We attempted to find the Phantom Ship but the road had still not been cleared so we couldn't get to it.

We also think that we know where Mt. Mazama's treasure is but my mother-in-law was with us and she can't take long hikes so we had to skip that one as well.

My wife and I will be heading up there with my MIL or my son in Sept. so we will try for these two then.

We found the two covered bridge boxes that are still in place. At McKee, there was a NFS work crew cutting the weeds, picking up trash and raking leaves but they never made it as far as the hiding place so we got that one with no problems.

At the Grave Creek bridge, we ran into a homeless couple who were camped out nearby. Their dogs gave us a big scare as they ran up barking. The dogs were called off and were able to find the box, stamp in and return it without being seen. The couple were in the river bed closer to the bridge frying up some trout they had caught. The box was only covered (barely) by one rock so I put a few more on to hide it a little better in case they did come over to see what we were up to.

In an act of wishful thinking, we checked for the Wimer box but it was missing.

I also started the Applegate Rest Area box. YIKES! Don't try this one unless you have a lot of time. It took me 45 minutes to do the first 10 or so trees. Some of the trees are so close to each other that I wasn't sure which of the two I should have been reading. There were also times when I would get a bead on the tree I was sure was the right one only to find myself standing in the middle of the lawn with no trees even close. Add in the sprinklers and the cars being parked in my path and it was a REAL challenge. My wife, MIL and son were dieing of a heat stroke in the car so I had to abandon my quest.

We found ourselves in the Grant's Pass area in the middle of one of the biggest heatwaves ever. The temperature in Medford on Saturday was 103 which broke the record 101 that was set in 1948. With this being the case, I didn't have a lot of trouble convincing everyone to go down to the river at Schroeder Park. After splashing around a bit, we went up the road a piece to find the Schroeder box. After finding the box, we discovered that there was a shorter way to get from the river parking lot to the box. Oh well! We got our exercise!

Since we are going back up in Sept., I started scouting locations and ideas for planting boxes. I have a few months to carve up some stamps for some of the spots that I think folks will find interesting so start warming up those hunting skills!
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Eric Polk aka California Bear

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