It's A Beautiful Day For A Field Trip

Saturday morning looked like a gorgeous day was coming. Ne and I couldn't resist, and snuck off to our favorite place, sans kinder, for the day. We justified it because we needed to go to Costco and Ne needed to check on her letterboxes.

Our first stop was the Columbia River Maritime Museum to look for some letterboxes by X Marks The Spot. This guy is a genius, as those of you who remember helping us find the birdhouse letterbox in Seaside can attest. I have to reveal a little too much information just to show you what he does. First, we had to find a particular name on a bench at the Maritime Museum, then look behind us for his mark. In the picture below, Ne is seated on the bench facing the one in question. Can you see his mark or device?


You'll have to look closer, say, at the electrical junction box.


You can pull the junction box off the conduit (held together by a wooden dowel), slide it open and see your letterbox contents.


I get a kick out of the fact that this guy runs around the area attaching innocuous looking hardware to public property. The average person would never guess of the letterboxing treasures that these things hold. You can learn more about letterboxing on the Web. Ne uses a particular site, called Atlas Quest, to track her own letterboxes as well as find new ones wherever we end up.

Ne also picked up a letterbox in Wheelhouse Coffee, a quaint coffee stop at the bottom of 14th Street. We don't drink coffee, but we sure did enjoy a cone of Tillamook Rocky Road ice cream.


Lastly, we checked on two of Ne's letterboxes she maintains in Shively Park and the Astoria Column. Two beautiful places on a sunny day, one hidden, one a tourist magnet.


Oh, and then we went to Costco (the Wikipedia entry for Costco is much more interesting than the corporate Web site) and bought $300 worth of food for the insatiable monsters back home. And that was it. Wonderful.

- Big Daddy Andy