After complaining for months about never meeting letterboxers, I am just
having a ball this month meeting several! Life is rich sometimes!

I never really had a chance to comment on our Idaho gathering last week. It
was just delightful for me, even if we just had our small group. What a
nice switch it is to have other people around that are every bit as obsessed
as I am! How nice to be able to get excited and ask others questions about
how this has affected their hiking, how do they carve, what supplies do they
like, etc, and not get blank stares or that "that sounds like a really nice
hobby for you" speech.

Don and Gwen and I made one discovery that was funny. They were looking
around my town for a spot that they thought would make a good letterbox
hiding spot. When they found one they really liked, they reached down, and
low and behold, there they found one of my letterboxes! Now, Idaho isn't
swimming in boxes yet, so the chances of this happening are not very good.
I just got a kick out of that.

Today, I made a short drive to Blackfoot as I had heard that Amanda/the
Paisley Orca was coming down for a family reunion and that she wouldn't mind
meeting for an exchange. I had to laugh as I came walking up to the crowd
at her family reunion and I asked for Amanda. Immediately her relatives
asked me, "are you one of those letterboxing friends?" I guess our
reputation preceeds me :-) I was directed to the pavilion and it wasn't too
hard to guess who I was looking for when I saw a woman surrounded by a
backpack, notepads, and carving materials carving stamps for respective
children. (I now have blue bunnies stamped on both my arms from one of the
little girls there.) Well it was great talking to her for a while, and I
was happy to find that she wasn't the only letterboxer there as I got to
meet and exchange with Moronie too (woo hoo, double the pleasure, double the
fun!). Now if this exchange isn't proof of an addiction, not much else is.
Who would choose to invade a family reunion of a bunch of people you've
never even met just to get a stamp or two?

Okay, now I'm getting a bit cheesy, but this has just been a blast! While I
was down there I found two of the boxes that had been planted during the
trip up to our little gathering by Don and Gwen and A & J Bear. "Mr. Potato
Head" cracked me up, and I just loved "Gotta Go," planted at an interpretive
trail off of a local rest stop. Yesterday, I hit "Early Hunters" and I will
go back for "Last of the Elephant Hunters." I am just having so much fun.
When I first started this last Spring, there were only two boxes for
hundreds of miles. There still aren't other letterboxers in this side of
the state, but there are nibbles and the boxes are coming. I'm glad I
discovered this in the early stages. It is fun to watch it growing. Plus I
keep saying that the fun thing about being the only letterboxer around (for
now) is that nearly all of my finds are counted as first finds. I have to
look for the positives.

Happy Hunting,
Cadenza (who's PFX is slowly beginning to grow)

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