This afternoon, kind of on the spur of the moment, I decided to
go to the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge again without the
grandchildren to try to find Silver Eagle's Aransas Whooping Crane
letterbox. My #3 son had expressed some interest in letterboxing
previously, so I asked if he wanted to go too. He jumped at the
chance, so off we went.
This time, we went after the box first, and did some `random'
hiking and wildlife watching afterwards. We had a much easier hike,
this time, and after some searching for the `right' tree, he found
it. The box is in great shape. Gosh, we felt like hobbits in the
dense woods or something, with all those huge trees and thick
brush. :) My son used a leaf from the trail and his fingerprint to
make his stamp in the book, since he didn't have a carved stamp yet.
Then he stamped the box's stamp onto plain paper, so he can cut it
out and put it in his log book when he gets one.
We went to the Jones Lake area, looking for alligators, but didn't
see any this time. We did see a tree frog, a ribbon snake, and four
deer, though and some lizards and lots of birds and butterflies,
throughout the Sanctuary, of course. The plant life there is amazing
too! There are so many unusual and beautiful flowers blooming, some
very spicy or pungent smelling. We talked a lot about the Karankawa
Tribe, who lived in this area firsttheir weapons, culture,
artifacts, way of living, etc. This time I took the whole tour loop,
rather than the quickest way out with tired kids. I have to say it
was a great time, even if I did feel bad for not taking them this
time.
And my son is carving a stamp and plans on getting a log book
tomorrow! :)

Busy Bee