I'm very pleased to announce that my dear sweet Pete reached 4000
letterbox finds last weekend just in time for "trick-or-treat"! We'd
had such a marvelous month chasing down monsters, flying up and down
the eastern side of the state of Connecticut, plus going north and
south along the seacoast, that we decided to end the month of October
with one last swing out to the western part of CT to finish up
the "Four Directions", a beautifully-crafted and arranged series
which so far has had only a few visitors. Hopefully many more will
come soon to explore this wonderful hiking area of both the old and
new Appalachian Trail in CT, where many boxes, including the "Giant's
Thumb", still patiently await more visitors. Later we even found a
hitcher peeping through the leaves that apparently had been cut off
from the opportunity to catch a ride for almost 2 years, so of course
we were more than glad to give him a lift, too!

On the way home, after one more quick stop for pumpkin ice cream,
Pete did a box count to discover that "Music Mt." had become his
4000th find! Quite appropriate considering that "Summer Music" was
the box that first got him hooked on letterboxing over 3 years ago!
Anyway, I'm so happy for Pete because he's such a terrific guy, and
he has had to work really hard to find this many boxes. Unlike many
of us older "AARP-types" who do part-time or volunteer work, Pete
still works FULL TIME! Not only does he do the daily commute, the
daily grind, and occasionally even find time after work to update the
hitchhiker page, but even on weekends when I'm sure he'd rather be
off letterboxing, he's still usually willing to go along graciously
with whatever plans I might have cooked up to attend folk festivals
(like NOMAD this past weekend in CT), do volunteer projects (like
trail construction last month in NM), take in theater productions
(like the "Henriad" this weekend in RI), go on a cruise, or even just
rake leaves! Hurray for Pete!!!

And speaking of cruises, we did actually sign up for another one just
the other day! It was too good of a deal to pass up - 5 days
of "Royal Caribbean" out of Miami for under $300, so we thought we'd
pass that on to anyone else who might be interested in joining us in
the latter part of January! We immediately thought of fun folks like
Don and Gwen, the Doubtful Guests, and many others who could turn
that ship into quite a letterboxing "Party Line", with boxes hidden
on islands along the way and maybe even a few on board the ship, too!
Plus fun things always happen on cruises anyway, like last time I
actually won a pearl necklace just for singing a few lines of a song!
So we really are hoping some old or new letterboxing friends will be
able to come aboard and get the party hopping! Please let us know off-
line if you're interested, and we'll be glad to send you the details!

Cheers,
Wanda from RI
P103F5908X738 (and, yes, as promised, we did plant that second set of
Palmyra Palms from letterboxingbee in a spot not too far from where
we met - watch for clues to "Love's Mystery" coming out soon on our
webpage!;-)