hurricane ike

in light of the hurricane that hit the texas coast early this morning, the letterboxes are probably the least important concern in galveston (and the houston area), but we've still wondered how they've faired.

our five year old son was watching some of the footage from galveston and we saw very close to where our two recently planted boxes were. one area was under several feet of water and one was right next to a seawall pier building that was demolished! both were magnetic boxes, so i don't think they'd float away, but i wouldn't bet money they stayed attached during all that craziness. when we noted that the images we were seeing were right by where we planted the boxes, our five year old said, "darnit! i guess we're going to have to plant some more...but that's ok." :-)

hoping all the boxers are safe and dry (and if any boxes are also, that's ok too!)

travelin ts
waco

warm fuzzies

i really love that you can leave comments now on AQ. just had a couple really nice notes from a recent finder that made me smile. also, very very excited about a recent plant in galveston that we thought had already gone missing, but as it turned out, it's been found! yay!

NPR and letterboxing

audio of Linda Wertheimer's story on letterboxing on Weekend Edition Saturday, April 10, 2004

Third Time's a Charm?

Yesterday we looked for "Harry Potter #2"(that's listed on LBNA). it's really close to our house. We attempted it last year, but the area had been significantly flooded so we were unable to get to it. a few month's ago, Carter and I looked for it again after seeing that a couple people had found it since the flood, but we had no luck. Yesterday, we took Ann with us (since she's the best looker in the family!), but we still couldn't find it, so we're calling it quits on this one.

waco treasure chest

Dear Texas Letterboxers and lurking friends far and wide:

4Armstrongs and Travelin' Ts are excited to announce a letterbox series planned for Waco's Cameron Park . Texas' largest municipal park (and one of the largest in the United States) sprawls over 400 acres and includes nearly 20 miles of trails for hiking and biking. The series will include six separate boxes throughout various parts of the park. Together the stamps of the six boxes will form a seventh clue, leading to the final box, containing a treasure trove of stamps. We would like to invite anyone interested in participating in this adventure to contribute stamps for the treasure chest. Please contact us at: travelintsoftexas@gmail.com if you would be interested in being a part of this exciting addition to the central Texas letterboxing experience.

We're also considering a waco event to launch the series if that helps entice your participation! :-)

happy trails,

4Armstrongs and Travelin' Ts
travelintsoftexas@gmail.com

tag clouds

just ran across a cool website that converts your blog or website into a tag cloud, or visual representation of the keywords found in the source (http://wordle.net). here's what this blog looked like:

crazy small world

So last summer, we met Astro D in Santa Fe. This past spring, we met Astro D's college roommate and recent letterbox convert, Bell Motel, who lives in Austin.  Last month, we planted a letterbox in Galveston ("Just Off the Strand"), inspired  by this beautiful Victorian building. Within a week, we get a note from Bell Motel, who happens to be visiting a friend in Galveston whom she's gotten hooked on letterboxing. They visit this recent plant of ours and get this...Bell Motel's friend is a relative of a 19th century Galveston businessman for which the building is named! How Crazy is that?!?! AND, the living relative, worked at the Hotel Galvez as a teenager, which is where the clues begin for the other box we planted while visiting Galveston ("The Great Storm"). And just think...if we hadn't met this nice letterboxer in Santa Fe a year ago, we'd have no idea of the name or story of the building in Galveston.  Small, but fun, crazy, and delightful world.

another one bites the dust

Well, another letterbox of ours planted at the Arboretum in Woodway ("Little Critters") went missing. UGGH! It's such a great spot, but in about a month's time, two of the three boxes we planted there have gone MIA.  

Galveston, TX

We recently spent a few days in Galveston and squeezed in some time to check on three letterboxes- "And Then There Were Nun", "Good Day!!!", and "We Have No Bananas," but sadly, all three seem to be missing. The silver lining though was that two of these were at a wonderful park (Kempner Park) that we'd never seen before. To make up for it, planted two letterboxes, "Just Off the Strand" and "The Great Storm." 

highlights and lowlights

Today Carter wanted to try his hand at carving (a scary proposition for a 5 year old!) but he had fun and didn't chop any fingers off! He wants to plant "his letterbox", which is so cute. i'm trying to decide how to put it out there for people to find, but not have them disappointed to find a stamp carved by a five year old!

Also today, we realized there was a geocache just down the street from our house and we decided to go look for it (our first "geocaching outing" without any coordinates or a GPS and found it! woohoo!

We also went to check on a box we'd planted not even a month ago...one we really liked in a cool place ("A Prickly Spot") and it's nowhere to be found. I know everyone who plants experiences this, but it doesn't make it any less sucky. Not sure what happened to it, but the last time i checked on it, the most recent finder hadn't done a very good job of rehiding it, which is really annoying. not sure if that happened again or what, but very disappointing. We also came to the realization that a box we planted in Frisco, Colorado ("Are There Bears Out There?") has gone missing as well. We'd hoped that the first person to email about not finding it was just in the wrong place, but shortly after two more said the same thing, so i'm sure it's gone. we changed the status on both of these to retired. Sand ending to a couple fun plants. We hope they were fun for the few people that had a chance to find them.

new letterboxes in Woodway, TX

we planted three new letterboxes this weekend at the Carleen Bright Arboretum in Woodway, Texas: "A Day at the Arboretum", "Little Critters", and "A Prickly Spot."

planting milestone

just realized that we hit the 20 mark on letterbox plants! we've got three more ready to go to the Carleen Bright Arboretum in Waco, hopefully this weekend. It's been really exciting to see boxers scurrying off to find these new boxes lately and having such a good time hunting them.

welcoming our newest letterboxer

we welcomed the fourth and smallest member of The Travelin' Ts this week and look forward to taking him out on some letterboxing adventures in the near future!

2 boxes and a hitchhiker planted

just posted the clues for our two newest letterboxes:

The Draped Urn

Pilgrimage

new letterboxes

finally getting out a couple letterboxes before the arrival of our second son on tuesday!. "The Draped Urn" and "Pilgrimage" will be planted tomorrow morning.

catching up

so i'm a few months late on this, but we attended the 5th Texas Annual Letterboxing Event in March and had a great time meeting new folks and seeing some old friends. It was fun to put faces with the trailnames and stamps we've seen at so many boxes.

letterbox visitors

I'm excited to welcome Astro D and Lionsmane of Santa Fe to Waco today! They're passing through on their way down to TALE this weekend in Bastrop, Texas and plan to do some boxing here in Central Texas. They are two of my favorite letterboxers and introduced us to all kinds of great letterboxing experiences and types of boxes and clues this summer in Santa Fe.

Belton, Texas

Today we visited Confederate Park, in Belton, Texas for a little sunshine and letterboxing. The park has a nice walking path along the creek where we found tx dragonfly's "I-35" box and also zturtle's "Chisholm Trail" series.

5th TX Annual LB Event (TALE)

We're excited about our first ever letterboxing event coming up at the beginning of March. The 5th Texas Annual Letterboxing Event already has nearly 100 people planning to attend! It should be a lot of fun and we're looking forward to meeting so many of the letterboxers that we've only encountered in logbooks so far. We're also really excited to see some LB friends that we've been fortunate enough to meet in person - even some from our Santa Fe trip this past summer. A longtime friend and new letterboxing convert, MandMGM, is coming too. We'll both be at a conference in Newport, RI next month and hope to snag a couple boxes there as well.