Wandering with Purpose

Many years ago I heard about geocaching. The idea was so awesome, I thought. But I’ve never had a GPS unit. I’ve mentioned borrowing one but we never have. Somewhere along my blog hopping I read about geocaching’s cousin, letterboxing.

Last year sometime we went letterboxing at Bezeal Park near our home in Pedee. It was as much fun as I was expecting. The kids thought so too. We were onto something. I spent quite a bit of time at the letterboxing site, looking up clues but we hadn’t ventured out again.

A few weeks ago there was a no school and a sunny afternoon. After nap I sat everyone down and told them my idea to go look for a box at Armitage Park, near our house. I was met with some “yeahs!” and some “nahhhhs”. We set out anyway, I told the nay-sayer (#1) that we’d have fun and it was better than sitting in the house all afternoon.

We got to Armitage Park and discovered it was a fee park, without cash I couldn’t park so now I needed a plan B. We found a place to pull over so I could use the internet on my phone to find another clue somewhere in the area. The trick with the clues is there is nearly nothing to tip a person off to where the box might be hidden by the name so I had to look through a lot before I found one that looked promising.

I was looking for a park or park-like place where the children could run a bit and I wouldn’t have to always be trying to get them to stay right with me. I was also hoping for an easy clue so we would have success.

We drove to Stewart’s Pond, which interesting was just down the street from Mr. Wiedz’s office, and got ready to search. Once we were on our way I figured out the clue, which needed decoding, and we got to run and walk around a really great wetland area. We followed the clues which I’m sure led us to the right area. The area we found was littered with old shoes, dead animal bones, broken bottles and lots of trash. Since the area wasn't very safe looking I wasn't keen on letting the boys (the only ones interested) in getting on the ground and digging.

Needless to say we didn't find our target but we had a fun afternoon wandering around and looking for a "tombstone faced tree".

And nothing finishes a day of wandering like a hand-dipped chocolate covered ice cream bar from the Euphoria Chocolate Company outlet store.