Activity

A mystery letterbox is a great activity which is done outside and is also fun for all ages. This makes it an excellent family fun activity. Not only does it allow you to be out in the fresh air, it also exercises the mind by looking to solve a puzzle.

If you just aren’t knowledgeable about letterboxing, it is a hobby of sorts. It going on the moors of England now has spread for the U.S. and also other areas of the planet.

Basically, a letterbox is really a container you discover outside somewhere. A common place to hide them is parks on trails.

What’s inside this mysterious container? Simply this: a log book, a rubber stamp, and in most cases an ink pad. Yup, that’s it.

What your are doing is collecting stamps. The stamp in the box usually represents it. So a box down the trail to Mt. Washington may possibly be described as a picture of Mt. Washington. Most of the stamps are hand-carved by whomever hid the therapy lamp, so they really are pretty intricate and unusual.

When you need to set out to pick one up of those boxes, one thing you need to do is lookup and use clues that could be seen on an internet site. Then off you go. You bring along with you your own logbook and your individual “signature stamp” signifying you. architectural letterbox can also be hand-carved.

When the lamp can be found, you are taking the stamp from the therapy lamp and stamp it to your personal logbook. Over time you collect hundreds as well as a large number of stamps. But you also stamp your individual signature stamp in the book that lives in the box. This shows that you are there. It’s a lot of fun to look on the comments all the people who have realized that particular box.

So why is a mystery letterbox not the same as a consistent one? Well, for ordinary boxes, the “clues” are actually directions. They inform you exactly where to visit find the box. For instance, the clue might say “Take the skyline trail, at the first fork go left, in 10 steps look behind the 3-trunked tree in your right.”

But a mysterious box requires much more of you and locate it. These boxes are little puzzles that have to be figured out. So for that reason, these are great if you want to give your kids challenging. And there’s nothing more satisfying than locating a letterbox you had to solve a clue for.

Here’s a sample. My husband and I are big Harry Potter fans. One letterbox on Cape Cod was hidden your day one of the Harry books became available. The clue was comprised of instructions depending on something in the series.

One step thought to find the pond named after Colin Creevy’s brother. Then count the number of words to the first book in the event it first mentioned where Mr. Dursley works and do certain calculations on that number, etc.

When we found this area, the stamp inside would have been a hand-carved image of Hagrid with Hedwig sitting on his shoulder.

So as you can tell, finding a mystery letterbox can be plenty of fun for the whole family. To locate mystery letterboxes, check out one of the following websites:

:

Click on Search for Boxes.

Select your state.

For the city, put a question mark.

Click on Search boxes.

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Under Letterboxes inside the top menu, select Simple Search.

In this area titled Area Search, check “Include only mysteries.”

Select your state.

Click on Search.