Thursday, June 11, 2009

Happy Hunters

Our family loves to go letterboxing. It combines great exercise with map reading, navigation, and a good ol-fashioned treasure hunting. Cy wants to be an archaeologist, so this is a perfect training for him. In fact, out of the seven of us, he is the one who finds the actual box 90% of the time.
Yesterday we FINALLY found the one at the Platteville Mound that we couldn't find last year..."Dial M For Letterbox". Last year we decided to find another box (there were 2 separate hunts) because it was getting too dark to find a pivotal clue for "Dial M". It was a sweet victory to find the "M" stamp this time around, especially since one of the clues was found using my Uncle Jupe's step!
A few weeks ago we started our letterboxing year with a trip over to my hometown of Belmont. Actually we didn't go into "new Belmont", we traveled to "old Belmont", home of the First State Capitol. The authors of this hunt were very creative in having us extract clues from the signs surrounding the capitol buildings.

Next we took a short drive over to the Belmont Mound State Park and started our hunt from the bottom step of the observation tower. (We climbed the tower later, much to the chagrin of Mom's fainting heart!)

Off we went into the woods...on the trails, using our brand-new compass...

...until at last the box was found!

It was another great hunt because it was challenging but not impossible. I love how it keeps all of our kids engaged. Ally enjoys reading the clues out loud and deciphering what they mean; Cy likes leading the way on the trail and spotting the box once we hit the final clue; Paige and Shae like hiking the trails, and Wynne just enjoys the conversation and action!
Sometime this summer, I'd like the kids to make their own clues and hide their own box for others to find. I hid one for Ally's birthday -- it's at the park near the river if anyone's up for it! It would be wonderful to be able to carve the stamp with as much detail as some of the ones we've found. Fun fun fun!!

What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, I tell you the truth, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off.--Matthew 18:12-13

1 Comments:

Blogger Teresa @ Grammy Girlfriend said...

I enjoyed reading your blog...So many neat blogs in the the blog world...which I am new to.

I just posted the last of our Disney posts....
Hope you will enjoy it.
Stop by when you have some time.
I love all my new blog friends.

June 12, 2009 at 7:06 PM  

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