Letter Boxing

In an attempt to find something fun to do today I googled fun things to do with kids in Nashville and a whole new world was opened to me! Have you ever heard of letter boxing?! I had not and we had so much stinkin' fun...I'm pretty sure we just started a Vaughn family tradition. Basically, it's the old school version of geocaching. People have been hiding boxes with hand carved stamps in them for about 30 years. There are thousands and thousands of hidden boxes around North America. There is a website online where people post the clues to find their boxes. It's a great family activity that gets you outdoors enjoying nature and spending time with your kids and a fun "treasure" hunt at the same time. All you need is your own stamp (we used a store bought one because I didn't have time to carve my own this morning), pen, journal, ink pad and compass. You are given a start point and then you solve clues and hopefully end up at a letterbox! They are usually hidden under trees or in "secret" places. I went to letterboxing.org and found that there were 2 hidden in manchester and one was at the park we go to all the time. Celine and Paisley and I roughed the 99 degree weather and were so EXCITED when we found our first letterbox!!! It was hidden under some tree roots. I have walked by that tree many times and would have never known it was there. It was so fun to open the weathered box to find a hand carved eraser stamp and a little notebook that all the people who had found it had signed. There were about 15 different people since 2007 and we were the first ones from 2010. Who knew we had treasures so close to home. There are TONS of them in UT and CO and TN and we can't wait to find more. We stamped the box hiders stamp in our journal so we could keep track of all the boxes we find. We are going to find one every day while Celine is here. This is one of the most fun things I have done in a long time and if you have kids you MUST try this.