trip to Summerdale, ALMay 3, 2009
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very spacious campsite, no table
I drove 366 miles today and had two hour-long stops at rest areas, plus a gas stop. The love bugs are out and covered the whole front of poor Miss Daisy! I left O'Leno SP about 8:45 AM and checked into the Escapee Park called Plantation here in lower Alabama at 4:30 Central Time. Right after I unhooked the car and backed into my site, it started to rain. When the rain let up for a few minutes, I hooked up the electric and cooked supper while it rained again. The second time it stopped, I hooked up the water then went to an ice cream social! There were a lot of people there and one couple came over to tell me about Weeks Bay boardwalk trails where I should see pitcher plants starting to bloom. How nice!
At the first rest stop, I met up with another letterboxer who had sent me clues to her box in this area. She wanted to exchange our "signature stamps". I found out she had two "personal travelers" and to get those stamps, I had to answer her riddles. The first one was "What did Yogi Bear always try to steal?" (picnic basket) and the other one was to guess her astrological sign given the clues that it is both fixed and fire. I had to look that up on the Internet to find out she's a Leo, so that stamp is of a lion. Finally, she does mostly LTCs and I had no idea what that was all about, so I asked her. They are not letterboxes at all, but Letterboxing Trading Cards. People put a stamp on a piece of paper, cardboard, wood, leather, or whatever that is the size of traditional trading cards. Then, they trade these cards with other letterboxers or have meetings with a theme. Like - make at least one LTC of what you would find on a farm - the barnyard LTC meet!! My goodness, what a hobby! I will stick to finding traditional letterboxes hidden in the great outdoors and sometimes in buildings.
Michelle (Snail Mail) came with her husband, Chuck (woodchuck) and her daughter, Melanie (Rubber Ducky). We went searching for a letterbox hidden at the rest stop, but Chuck had to go into the wooded area to look under the tree we thought the letterbox was under. We had flip flops on and there were prickly bushes and maybe poison ivy in there. He didn't find the box, so we gave up.
At the second rest area, in Alabama, I searched and found a letterbox with the theme of "On the Road Day and Night". That was fitting for me, and a nice stamp! This was a nice way to rest and walk after driving for a few hours! I wonder how many other rest areas have boxes hidden there?
