Memorial Day Weekend Letterboxing- Remembered

Memorial Day Weekend 2008 will be one that I remember for a long time to come. It was actually my first long weekend letterboxing, and it was also special for so many other reasons. We will have to start out Saturday morning.

Saturday was International Plant a Letterbox Day, so I had to make sure that I planted my "Luck of the Irish" letterbox exactly where I wanted it. When I got to the building where I wanted to place it, there was no real good place to hide it. But with a little cunning, and a bit of searching I soon found the perfect hiding spot for a great little box. This was only the first of my big events for the day. I soon had to drive to Syracuse to pick up a visiting letterboxer from a few states away.

About a month prior a small thread erupted on the Singles Anonymous Board here on Atlas Quest, and I began talking to a fellow boxer named JBBK from Indiana. We started sending e-mails, then chatting, IM's, texting, then phone calls. Well one day she asked me out of the blue what I was doing over the long weekend. She had never been to New York and though it would be interesting to take a vacation here and do some letterboxing. Personally I think she just wanted to try out some of my cooking. So she got a plane ticket and was off.

I picked her up at the airport and we were off to try and find her her first New York letterbox. We had our clue and saddled up to the bar for a drink and slowly started to realize that something was amiss. We asked one of the waitresses a question and she called over the host of the upstairs dining room. He knew what we were up to immediately. The clues to the box were bases on the decore of the bar, but the bar had been redecorated 4 months before. But we were not going to give up.

We muddled through the clues we could, and guessed at the ones we thought we knew, and got the answers for the ones that were still there. Pretty soon JBBK have enough to make an educated guess at the location of the letterbox. I deftly searched for the box and I found....... a guest check that read "Your Letterbox". The box had gone missing about 2 months prior, and when the host noticed it was missing back then, he had placed the note there for anyone that came looking for it. After a slow and partially disappointing start we headed down the road toward some dinner and sleep to start out early the next morning for a lot of boxes.

Sunday morning came, but before we set out I called a frequent boxing partner Red Barn Photos. She had to head to her parents, but said she was game for some boxes. We started out with the box I had planted the day before. After that we were off to Ithaca. We found the next 3 boxes without difficulty, but the 4th elluded us - as did the 5th. But we did get a chance to show JBBK some great waterfalls. But we were far from done. We set out for another series of boxes, Gaia the Great Turtle. As you can tell, JBBK really took a liking to our resident turtle. Then it was off to another box that was planted the day before for IPLD. After a few more finds we decided we better do our exchanges and call it a night. We finished our exchanges as the sun was setting and dropped Red Barn Photos off at her car. JBBK stopped off for some Pistacho ice cream just before the ice cream shop closed at 10.

As I loaded Atlas Quest to log my finds I noticed that 5 more boxes had been planted within 15 miles of my house. I decided I had to call Red Barn Photos and rub it in that she would not get to be First Finder on these since she was going to visit her parents in the morning about the time JBBK and I would be logging into the boxes. Then JBBK uttered some great words "We can go night boxing". And within 45 minutes Red Barn Photos was back and armed with the clues and flash lights we were back on the road. Dressed in an array of shorts, sleep pants, and t-shirts we were wandering through the woods next to a graveyard with our flashlights wondering if we had made the right call. As soon as we found the first two boxes we knew we had. The third proved a bit more challenging, and we walked right past the 4rd in the dark. But we found number 5 without a problem. We logged into the last box at 136 am. A great time to be letterboxing in the woods.

We sent Red Barn Photos home for some sleep and JBBK and I stayed up for about 2 more hours talking about the day and planning her last full day in New York. After breakfast on Monday we went back for the box we had missed. The woods were a lot less daunting in the daylight, and we had walked right by our lone missing box. We then explored the cemetary next door, and went out for a few other letterboxes in the area. I started a giant pot of Venison Stew, in between our letterboxing outings. After we got done eating dinner the phone rang. It was Red Barn Photos telling us about a new box that was just planted. So off we went. It was only about 9:30 pm and it was in a well lit area, but it was still fun.

After getting a few more boxes, JBBK and I retired our boxing bags for the night and took up a Scrabble board. I should have stuck to letterboxing! Tuesday morning it was time to say goodbye. This was something that niether of us really wanted to do. We both figured if we kept going all weekend that the time wouldn't come for her to have to leave.

But on the way to the airport we grabbed another letterbox, and talked about the trip. And also started planning my trip out west. The scene at the airport was one of joy and sorrow. We had one of the greatest weekends, but it was over and we were going to be seperated by 600+ miles again. We text constantly, call several times a day, and e-mail even more. Trips are planned in both directions. We found a lot more than letterboxes that weekend, we found each other.