Letterboxing!
My friend Wendy wrote this awesome post on geocaching and letterboxing:
Letterboxing is similar to geocaching in that you search for boxes, but the approach is pretty different. Again, you look up boxes to find on a website — the two main ones are atlasquest.com and letterboxing.org — but instead of using technology to find the boxes, you follow clues kind of like you’d find on a treasure map or an adventure comic. Stuff like: “Walk to the end of the fence and look in the hollow of the ivy covered tree.”
The other cool thing about letterboxing is the rubber stamps! Each letterbox has its own stamp and each letterboxer or letterboxing team has a signature too. Once you find the box, there is a little booklet inside along with the box’s stamp. You stamp the letterbox stamp in your notebook and write down any notes about your experience. Then you stamp your signature stamp in the booklet in the box. A lot of people use purchased rubber stamps, but a fun part of the hobby is that most of the stamps are hand-carved.
It sounds like…having a pen pal that you can only reach by going on a pirate treasure hunt? It sounds pretty awesome, in other words. I want to try it!
