Hirundo Wildlife Refuge

November 26, 2008

The day before Thanksgiving was particularly deserted at our respective workplaces, so Rainwater and I skipped out early, went for a late Thai lunch, and made it home while there was still daylight - a very rare occurrence since the sun sets at 4pm these days. OnTheCorner had recently had the thought that Hirundo Wildlife Refuge could be a good place to hide letterboxes (though she hadn't been there in many years) ... so I suggested a reconnaissance mission to investigate. Now there are two boxes hiding in these here woods - the frog prince and his castle! We had a really fun time hiding them! One of the trails is marked by spooky white crosses, and Rainwater made a blair witch inspired video.

In the snow? Are we insane?

November 22, 2008 - Cascade Park

The first snow of the winter arrived today - but that was not going to stop us from finding another letterbox!! (Perhaps it should have - we spent most of the trek into Cascade Park doubting our sanity!) The stamp that inspired this mission is called "Life-flight of Maine" - located at the edge of a field behind the park, overlooking nearby eastern maine medical center - hence the helicopter theme. The wind was blowing across this field ferociously, making it very difficult to stamp into the books. Pictures aren't as fun without boxing buddies, but we were glad not to have to take the time to get extra stamps - brrrr!

We also stopped off at the Bangor Library and found the letterbox "Buried Truth" which I had previously scoped out (the day I went to the post office to mail James Bone, Zamboni and a b-day present for my favorite little Finnish buddy - mom called while I was there and gave me directions to investigate this newly posted box. To spoil the surprise, the stamp is an eraser with the words "goverment = lies" carved in it. The best part of that box was the clue - behind the statue of three men, one with an axe.

Indian Trail Park - Look-out!!

November 1, 2008 - One last adventure with Zamboni and James Bone!

Indian Trail Park - Brewer, ME.

This is a series of three boxes called "Look-out!", "Broken Tree" and "Watch your Ankles!"

We like to make things difficult by not following directions properly (couldn't find the first landmark, so just jumped into the middle of the second set of clues) ... so the first box we discovered was the broken tree, which you might infer from the clue was hidden under the base of a very large fallen tree. Zamboni and James Bone are very small in comparison!

From there we journeyed on to the third box, hidden along the bank of the Penobscot River, named 'watch your ankles' because it is only accessible (without getting wet, which clearly we would not do on a such a cold November day!) at low tide. We were in luck with the tide situation (maybe OnTheCorner planned ahead a bit?) ... the box was however entirely full of water! Fortunately the logbook was kept dry in it's plastic bag, so we got to leave our marks.

Finally we attempted to reverse the clues to navigate to box #1, but while we were certainly in the right area, we just could not find the 'look-out box.' It was a bit of a treacherous going, because the rocky path was covered in fallen oak leaves, which are very slippery - we couldn't count out the right number of paces because we had to walk in cautious baby steps, and while the clue says you should come to the edge of a cliff, that didn't seem like a smart idea! After extensive searching, we were forced to concede this one.

Zamboni and James Bone had to return to their people - thanks for playing with us little buddies!!
(You can check out the further adventures of James Bone at http://jamesbone.blogspot.com/ as he accompanies ResQlou on a new set of missions!)