Letterboxing

I have been hearing so much about geocaching lately from my scout-trouped little brother to my desperate for fun poor college friends. I've wanted to try it, but alas, we are poor and technologically behind. Neither of us has an i-pod, and you can forget about an i-phone, i-pad, or any other i-way of keeping up with science.

We don't even have cable.

So when I heard about Letterboxing, I got really excited. All you need is a stamp, a stamp pad, a journal, and the Internet. Check, check, check and check.

Letterboxing started in England in the 1800's. It's basically the old-school way of geocaching, but with the Internet, made tons easier. You just look up clues in your area online, and then follow them to a box that will have a hand-made stamp and a log in book. You stamp you're journal with the special stamp found in the box, and stamp the log in book with your stamp.

We got really excited when we found out that there were FOUR letterboxes in Rexburg alone, so we went on a hunt

When we found the first one, we got really excited. The log-in book was from 2007 and the last entry was from YESTERDAY. Who knew? Too bad there was no stamp in that box to put in our journal...

The next two were in the same park, but we didn't have any luck finding them. The directions were old, so we think that nature took over some of the "trails" we were told to follow. All the more mysterious to try and find though!

We found the last one pretty easy and proudly stamped our journal. I think that one was from 2007 too.

All in all, it was a great Sunday afternoon activity. We had a lot of fun walking around and we didn't spend a dime. That's the way I like it.

Letterboxing started in North America in 1989, and there are tons of boxes all over the place. Go to Letterboxing.org to find out more and to find boxes in your area.