Friday, October 31, 2008

Get Lost!

(That's the name of the letterbox, not an order!) On October 18th (after finding the letterbox at the lake) we headed back to Bangor City Forest to find the remaining elusive box. This is a Letterboxing North America set of two boxes called Get Lost and Dust to Dust. Get Lost is at the very far edge of the forest trail where it meets an old railroad bed, and along the way we passed the site of Dust to Dust so we stopped to search it out again, now that we know how to read the compass ... we found Moose Trail, a tiny little winding track at the intersection of two more major trails, and counted out the proper number of paces from the trail head, searching at the proper number of degrees for a "large pine" ... but still nothing! So after some cursing about people who use pine trees as clues in the middle of a pine forest, we gave up and continued on down the golden road of pine needles to the end of the trail. There we met with much more success, though there was a tricky part about following the unmarked East Trail which had on a previous attempt by certain other members of this family caused some confusion, because there is also a marked East Trail.

At the Get Lost Letterbox, there is a bonus clue for another letterbox, which requires finding a trail that is not on the map. From the clue we gathered that Woodchuck Trail would at some point branch off from the railroad bed trail and lead back to the main loop ... and since we were already at the railroad bed, we might as well follow it for awhile ... so we walked, and walked and walked ... mildly reminiscent of another adventure in which we kept saying, "well maybe it's just around the next bend..." except that this time we gave up and turned around (after asking some bicyclists who said there were no trails branching off up ahead) - we had been afraid that we passed one possible side-trail, but it was too marshy to access. In hindsight, having looked at a better internet version of the map, we probably just had to keep going ... but we'll save it for another day.

On the walk back towards the car, we again passed the intersection of Moose Trail with the main paths, but this time, coming from the opposite way, we finally noticed that there is in fact another half of Moose Trail!! If we had properly paid attention we would have noticed that the clue begins with a compass direction telling which half of Moose Trail to start from, but we conveniently had ignored that before! So, after only three tries for OnTheCorner and 2 for Agent S. and 1 for the boxing buddies, the Dust to Dust box was discovered!!


We then left the city forest after a three hour tour (humming the Gilligan's Island theme song) and headed off in search of food ... because much like Gilligan's crew we weren't prepared to be gone for quite so long and hadn't thought to bring any lunch. The mommy decided we deserved Pepinos burritoes after such an arduous adventure, and I was hardly going to argue! I do love this letterboxing! =)


Back at home it was such a lovely autumn day that Zamboni and James Bone couldn't resist the fun of jumping in a pile of leaves! Who could enjoy a New England fall without a little leaf peeping?

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