Went letterboxing today to get the last stamp we needed from Lake
Anna State Park in Spotsylvania, Virginia. Want to know how to turn
a .8 mile hike with 3 kids in to a 2 hour search? Try following the
directions to the "over the river and through the woods" LB while
looking at the parks trail map. It seems the section of trail this
book is on with the little wooden bridge, was actually put in after
the maps were made and no updated maps have come out.

It was really kinda funny today. The kids and I were determined to
find this box and we were not giving up. We finally decided to go to
the park office and ask about the little wooden bridge, not far from
the Elfien trail. The poor park ranger looked at me like I had lost
my mind. First off they have no Elfien trail. LOL, and second she had
no idea what little bridge I was talking about. So I said, it's were
the mountain laurels grow. She then informed me that Mountain Laurel
grew all over the park, so that didn't help any. I said ok, what
about a Blue Coconut hanging in a tree. No she hadn't seen any of
those either. About that time another Ranger came in from a back
office and asked me if I had said something about a blue coconut. I
told him I had and he said they had been taken down last fall. I
asked if he remember where they were and he did. He then asked if I
was geocaching or on some other type of treasure hunt. Well, at first
I didn't know what to say, then I figured I better tell the truth. So
I explained to the now three Rangers all about Letterboxing and even
mentioned how the state parks in CT promoted it. They loved the idea
and thought it was great that their park had some of these boxes. Of
course they had no problem with anyone planting another box in the
park as long as they stopped by the park office first and informed
someone what they were putting out, and perhaps supply a copy of the
clues to the box. Just in case. Then I got the spill on nuts and how
you never know what others may decide to leave in a park and in the
event of a terror attack, it's always nice to know whats hidden in
the woods and where. Also if a problem came up with one of the boxes
they wanted a contact person. He finished by telling me that
probably 5 years down the road someone from the higher office of Park
Rangers would send out a memo to get them to promote letterboxing,
and they would be 5 years ahead of the time! He sounded almost proud
when he said that!

To end, with the now new help from the Rangers, I found the LB about
10 mins after leaving the office. Happy, hot and tired we loaded back
into the van and headed home with our new stamp!

Happy LBing!
Dee