Letterboxing 101

"Letterboxing is an intriguing “treasure hunt” style outdoor activity. Letterboxers hide small, weatherproof boxes in publicly-accessible places (like parks) and post clues to finding the box online on one of several Web sites. However, clues to finding some of the most highly-sought boxes are passed around by word of mouth. There are about 20,000 letterboxes hidden in North America alone. Individual letterboxes usually contain a log book, an often hand-carved rubber stamp and may contain an ink pad. Finders make an imprint of the letterbox's stamp on their personal log book, and leave an imprint of their personal stamp on the letterbox's logbook."


A few months ago, a co-worker told me all about her weekend searching for letterboxes and proceeded to tell me all about this great past time! Since then, in addition to spreading the word, our entire family has been scouring the hundreds of letterboxes in our area alone!! It's great exercise and offers a great adventure, not to mention the endless scrap booking opportunities!!

See that tricky box hidden off the path between a few fallen logs?

Click to enlarge

It's amazing to me that this great activity has been all around me and it's taken me 9 1/2 years as a parent and 5 years as a girl scout leader to finally learn about it's existence!!

Conveniently, it didn't take both Lauren and Megan long to earn this: