We have a beautiful, faith-filled, fun retreat happening, and we still have room for more sisters in Christ. Would any of you letterboxing ladies like to join us?

Here is a short, video montage with some quotes from ladies who have been before. Please reach out to me with any questions. 🩷

There is a super unpleasant box in Saratoga. #1 it is in a state park #2 the clues are ridiculous #3 it is on the top of an incredibly steep muddy "cliff" #4 it has an exploded ink filled box that you don't discover til you open it. I looked like I had murdered a smurf. Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, did you enjoy the play?

Sorry this is so long winded, they don't call me Jabber for nothing.

There are three kinds of Postals: Micro, Standard, and Heavy. Micro is a #10 envelope less than one ounce. Standard is carte blanche usually less than 13 ounces. Heavy postals can contain a Book or a Jigsaw Puzzle no limits to size or weight. All are still valid.

In the beginning, at the dawn of AQ, there was a Yahoo Group. From 2004 until 2017 postal letterboxes mainly consisted of a good sized carved stamp (regular thickness--maybe even mounted) and some kind of creative logbook. Usually in a 6x9" bubble mailer, but carte blanche ruled the day.

The recipient was expected to take the package to the post office for weighing and postage and send it on its way. The price of postage was about $1 in the beginning for a well-crafted 6x9" bubble mailer. Postage just kept going up.

AQ developed Trackers, the Yahoo Group disbanded and migrated to AQ. The make-up of Postals continued as they always had been, big and heavy. Then someone came up with the idea for the MicroPostal and gradually we all got on board learning as we went. These lightweight beauties have become the default. A #10 envelope and a Forever stamp--no trip to the PO as long as you had a supply of stamps on hand.

The old Standard 6x9" is still valid just not the default anymore. They cost upwards of $5+/- in postage and a trip to the post office for the recipient. MicroPLBs cost the recipient one Forever stamp, and are required to include extra postage only if one Forever stamp is not enough. There are many requirements for MicroPLBs besides size and weight such as: thickness, rigidity, lumpiness, not violating barcode area, aspect ratio...it doesn't help that the PO keeps changing the rules.

Descriptions for Postal trackers should include information regarding what's expected. The word "Micro" or #10, or carte blanche, 6x9, extra heavy (there's an attribute). If there's confusion ask the person who owns the tracker.

Everything you want to know is in the Wiki Help on AQ.

All the stuff you'd ever need to know:
https://www.atlasquest.com/about/wiki/browse.php?catId=4

Specifically regarding shaving off the back: https://www.atlasquest.com/about/wiki/browse.php?catId=33#q792

Specifically regarding setting up a Tracker
https://www.atlasquest.com/about/wiki/browse.php?catId=42

I think it's called pigeonposted.com

There are not any additional clues. You may want to read things on my profile. Free guesses until 3:30 p.m. Saturday the 13th. Hope to be singing Country Roads by 7:00 pm.

I've lost count. Is this suspect 3 or 4?

Thank you for the tip! Those are really cute.
I try REALLY hard to match a card to someone's profile, even if all I can do is send stickers or decorations they like. I pulled an address with someone who loves the Blue Cats by Rina Zeniuk, and all I had was an old Sandylion sticker of a blue fuzzy tiger, lol! I stuck it on there, drew a little arrow, and wrote "blue fuzzy tiger, not exactly a Rina Zeniuk Blue Cat." She lol'd in her message back to me and appreciated the humor.
It's those little things that make postcrossing so much fun!

It seems that the FBI offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the person. I do not know if that is proving to be helpful or bring out people wanting money.

There were two previous young men detained as persons of interest. One of them I heard was arrested for obstruction of justice, though I don't know what he did to get that charge. Both these men were questioned and released.

However, this person (who I will not name, but is in the article in case you want to know) confessed or implied he had done it. It was a family member that turned him in. And this person went to the police himself.

That last sentence is what I remember from the Governor Cox news conference/announcement I listened to on the radio this morning. A lot of details were given. I have looked for a video of it, but I can only find previous announcements about this subject.

His family member who turned him in (I'm thinking it was his father) has turned down the money.

I was just able find the video of Gov. Spencer Cox Full Statement. This is the statement he gave this morning. This gives a lot more information.

Yes, I say that it was his police officer father. That is such a sad position in which to be. I had not seen that second part. Thank you for sharing it.

What a good message that man shared after the updated information.

Thanks for that info!

Our family visited Montreal this summer, a truly beautiful city with wonderful people. My grandson, a HUGE baseball fan, and i hid a LB there in honor of Jackie Robinson, who played in Montreal just before going to the Dodgers. It's been about a month since we listed it and it is yet to be logged as a find. That started me looking over the lists of letterboxes in Montreal and it seems as though there is no one there into letterboxing, no new boxes, no new finds, almost no action at all.
My "stupider question" is, why do you think no one in Montreal is into letterboxing???

P.S. If anyone wants to go to Montreal and find our LB, feel free!!!
It's "Number 9 / Numero Neuf"

The images printed from the stamps and not the stamps themselves correct?

It belongs in a museum!

Just an add-on to


I was able to by-pass the trip to the post office by using my digital kitchen scale at home for the weighing, and PayPal to print and pay for my tracked mailing label. I Dropped off the package with the out-going mail at work. So nice and easy!

Now that I’m retired, I still weigh packages and print labels at home. In our area, we can leave letters/small packages in our mailbox for the letter carrier to pick up, but we usually take the packages to the PO and just drop it in the packages bin (no waiting in line).

When I list a postal tracker these days, I always say if it is a Micro, or a Standard, and if it is a Standard I also give its weight, so people can make an informed decision whether or not to join.

For the postal I mailed today, including its inkpad, USPS Ground postage was $7.60, plus I paid $1.99 for the 6x9 padded mailer.

Well, it makes sense to me. Political polarization has been increasing since before Trump. But Trump's leadership evokes extreme us versus them ideology. Which is like trying to put out a smouldering fire with gasoline. I do not see any real effort by the Trump administration to calm the storm and encourage unity. Do you?

Stoking the fire of division leads to more violence on both sides. And who is currently stoking the fire?

That's exactly why micro-postals have become by far the most popular today. And I would emphasize the importance of the host making clear in their tracker listing, what mailing method will be needed for their postal, so participants don't get an unexpected and expensive surprise.

This is the boxer’s first tracker and only my second postal. In addition to the stamp and full-size inkpad, the logbook was a little hardcover journal about 1/2-inch thick.

The three items arrived in just a plain business envelope with two Forever stamps. However the envelope was torn, and I’d guess the post office had to hand-cancel it.

Delightful, taking and making the fun where you find it!

No, he's the poster child of trying to create division and conflict. The man is a horrible human being, you won't get any disagreement out of me on that count, but that's not the point. He didn't order this assassination. Politics has always been divisive to a certain degree, and it might be more so now, but flashes of violence such as this I think are more a symptom of lax gun control laws.

Social media that allows people to go down rabbit holes of extremism could certainly be a contributing cause.

There's likely a myriad of causes at play here, but scapegoating every person who voted for Trump is patently absurd. Trump could have lost the election, Charlie Kirk could have still supported Republican causes, and he still could have been assassinated. To draw a straight line from a vote for Trump to this assassination is just absurd.


You can find people on both sides of the aisle who are stoking the fire. There are people on the right who would argue that your post is stoking the fire.

Posts such as yours also give people on the right a way to dismiss everything you might say. They'll point to posts such as that and say, "yeah, you can't reason with them. They're crazy!" And then when you DO say something thoughtful and interesting, you're already less credible.

So no, oversimplifying everything into "it's all Trump's fault" is not only not true, but sows distrust between groups as well. Trump's rhetoric could be a contributing cause, but it would be very subtle at best. Drawing a line from him to anyone who voted for him is just ridiculous, though.

-- Ryan

LB'ing is popular mostly in the US and Great Britain. I'd like to know if there are any other countries where it is as well. It looks like most plants in those, like yours, are by tourists.

In the UK, maybe letterboxing is popular at Dartmoor, but I’m in London right now with my sister, and there aren’t that many boxes in the area. Luckily, we did find one and also planted one. We’ll plant a few more during our travels for future travelers.

Well, Dartmoor is considered to be the birthplace and "mecca" of Letterboxing. Guess I wrongly assumed that LB'ing was as popular in England as it is in the US.

Like parts of the US, Canada has some areas which are just more active than others. When we were in the Calgary area, there were quite a few boxes to find and this was also true when we went out to the Maritime Provinces. If I recall correctly, Ontario still has a pretty strong and active letterboxing community.

When we have traveled elsewhere, we have come to realize that letterboxers around the globe often post their clues on sites other than AQ and LbNA. Some still post on personal websites or other regional letterboxing sites. When we were in the Canary Islands, one of our greatest finds was a box planted in the lava field of a dormant volcano. It was posted on a German letterboxing site and we had to translate the clues into English!

Like our area, the number of boxes in a particular area depends on the active LB'ers who live there, I think.
Nice to know there are a lot of boxes in the Maritimes. I haven't been there since pre-boxing days, and would like to travel there again.