Letterboxing

Jim had today off of work and it was way too glorious to stay inside, so we went letterboxing.

Letterboxing is kind of like a scavenger hunt for adults. Letterboxers hide small, weatherproof boxes in publicly-accessible places (like parks) and post clues to finding the box online on one of several Web sites. However, clues to finding some of the most highly-sought boxes are passed around by word of mouth. There are about 20,000 letterboxes hidden in North America alone. Individual letterboxes usually contain a log book, an often hand-carved rubber stamp and may contain an ink pad. Finders make an imprint of the letterbox's stamp on their personal log book, and leave an imprint of their personal stamp on the letterbox's logbook .

Here are some pictures of our letterboxing adventure. We printed out the clues for five letterboxes. Fortunately, they were all still in place. We found this one under a log. These are a spider stamp and Ariel that we collected today. We had so much fun that I am sure we will go again, although we may have to wait until spring.

Wine and Running

Yesterday, Jim and I went to the Spring Wine Festival at Mount Vernon. We took the tarp (because the ground is still wet) and the picnic blanket, bought a fruit and cheese box and a bottle of cabernet and sat on the south lawn with all these people and listened to the jazz band. It was lovely. We also tasted several wines and toured the mansion. This wine festival is the only time of the year when the cellar is open and you can go under the house.

In other news, I've been working on a running training program called Couch to 5K. It is a nine week program that builds your endurance until you can run a 5K start to finish. You run each week's program three times. I am currently in week 4 and I was able to finish the week four set for the first time yesterday. The first time, I had to walk the last three minutes of the final interval. So I am probably going to do week 4 two or maybe three more times before I move on.