First up: The Palo Verde Letterbox. Found it with no problems except for a slippery climb up. The soil was loose so I ended up kicking down a few rocks. The good news was that I dislodged an empty beer bottle that had been resting halfway down the slope so I was able to pick this up and take it to a trashcan. Letter in, Litter out! There were some surfers out in the area but they didn't have eyes for anything but the ocean. (BTW: Those guys are INSANE! That section of coast is nothing but ROCKS!!)
Second box: Went up the hill to see The Angels. Another pretty easy find. As a matter of fact, I could see it from the trail when I actually looked for it. Once I had the box and had found a place to stamp into it, the floodgates opened and the trail was filled with people. 20 people must have been going up and down that section while I waited for a break to put the box back. I hid it a little better that it was when I got there.
Third box: Point Vicente Lighthouse. A word of advice for anyone looking for this one... Wear pants! OUCH! My legs are covered with scratches from the nice, dry chaparral plants in the area! After looking at the wrong boulders for a couple of minutes, I wised up and used the second set of directions (i.e. the ones through the iceplant) as a cross reference leading me to the correct boulders. By now, it was later in the afternoon at the hottest part of the day. I experienced something I have never seen before.
The stamp was beautiful and practically begged to be done in multiple colors. I spent a few minutes coloring it all up, huffed on it and stamped it. Most of the colors didn't come out. The ones that did were pretty faded. I cleaned the stamp off and tried it with one color, thinking I had let the others sit too long. I got the same result, a faded semi-image. The stamp was so hot that the ink was drying too fast to stamp it.
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Eric Polk
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