Letterboxing and Geocaching

Flyfisher's Letterboxing Page

Letterboxing Web Ring - Letterboxing Homepages

About the first of November, ’01, a friend told me on Amateur Radio during our drive into work that he had gone out and found a geocache in a local park. He said it was really fun to use a GPS and find a treasure box in the woods.

I tried that the very next day, going to a just placed geocache about 5 miles away from my house. Over several weeks I found a number of geocaches in the Dayton, OH area. I also placed 8 geocaches of my own. Some of them are very easy. Some require a little more investigation. I call them “museum and a hike” boxes.

While I was going through the web learning about geocaches, I stumbled upon letterboxing. Letterboxing is a slightly older similar sport involved with finding treasures in the woods. With letterboxing, the treasure you find is a stamp and a logbook. The letterboxer takes a stamp and a logbook with them on the hike. On finding the letterbox, the boxer stamps the log book in the box with their stamp and stamps their own log book with the stamp in the letterbox. It sounds more confusing than it really is.

Part of my emphasis from the beginning has been to try to get active geocachers informed and interested in letterboxing. There are about 2500 active members of the Geocaching web group. Only about 350 letterboxers have so far been active in the national websites. My experience is that both sports are attractive to many of the same people. So from the beginning, I converted my geocaches to hybrid geocache/letterboxes. I list them both on the geocache site and the letterboxing site (with small variations)

Letterboxing meshed well with my love of the outdoors and my wanting to do almost anything except work on typing my thesis in electrical engineering. Shortly, I went a little over the detent into afterburner on placing letterboxes in Ohio. When I started putting out boxes, there were less than 10 letterboxes in Ohio. Now there are 50 (12 December, ’01). Other letterboxers active in the state include franzsolo, bayletterboxer, and lizard. This surge in letterboxes has been a group effort between all of us. I look forward to our having 100 boxes in Ohio and 30 active seekers by the time we all get together next spring for an all Ohio meeting.

Before you set out read the waiver of responsibility and disclaimer.

Flyfisher Letterboxes LbNA Home Ohio map