Photo Credit: Kevin McGee

Geochaching is fun, but if you want to ditch the GPS, letterboxing is the way to go.

One of the perks of writing for OFC is we keep discovering new and exciting things to do. To wit, letterboxing. While surfing the web for nuggets of geochache nirvana we stumbled upon letterboxing, sort of a second cousin to the geocache movement.

Imagine geocaching but replace the annoyance of using a gps while your kids ask you what “F%$&ing 3G!”  means, with a list of treasure hunt-esque instructions (think: walk 20 paces north and look for the big ‘W’). You can print out the instructions or just email them to your smart phone for in-the-field reference. The idea is to collect unique stamps in your log book from each letterbox and to bring a stamp of your own to leave your mark (and comments about the hunt) in the letterbox log book.

Photo Credit: Connie Weiss

What you need to get started

Not much, go to letterboxing.org and find a few letterboxes you like. We copied and pasted the directions for a few into an email addressed to ourselves, and then used that email as we tramped around Marblehead looking for the boxes. Grab a small notepad for each kid and if you have a stamp or two in your rainy day project box, bring that as well. If you have one, you may want to bring an ink pad in case the one in the box is missing or dry. Also, why not make a day of it and pack some snacks/lunch?

That’s it. Get going!