This message board is open for business! Enjoy!

I'm attending college elsewhere now, but I grew up in MN. I'm not going back home until Christmas, but I hope to plant a couple in my area then. ToT, I've been very impressed with your dedication to planting letterboxes! Keep up the good work! :)

Hey, fellow boxers in this fine state!

I was born and raised in MN...all in the environs of the small town of Scandia. I've been here for two weeks, and ended up staying a third because my husband (Fearless Leader) couldn't get away from work to come fetch me home! Soooo, I've been busy carving and planting around my old stomping grounds. I hope you'll enjoy the letterboxes I'll be leaving behind for you. Since I'll only be around once a year, I'd appreciate any help in making sure they're kept safe and dry. My folks will check on them periodically as well.

Anyhow, I'll be here til Saturday, so if you want to do an exchange, follow the clues to the Countryside Arts letterbox...they'll lead you right to me! ;-)


She Who Plants
who's going to the State Fair if Fearless delays another week! LOL

Hey
I grew up in that area too...we are Knarlwoods
We just got back from Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Germany and introduced
letterboxing to our exchange student kids.
What fun. If you get to the cities around Crystal airport there are five boxes for two very nice walks.

Hey
I grew up in that area too...we are Knarlwoods
We just got back from Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Germany and introduced
letterboxing to our exchange student kids.
What fun. If you get to the cities around Crystal airport there are five boxes for two very nice walks.

How active are searches and plantings during the next 6 months? Is it best to do the field scouting, theme planning, clue writing, carving etc during the winter and wait to do all the plantings in the spring? Does any one take there LBoxes inside during the winter? The longer the LBox stays in the field the more the chance of it suffering some hardship. Would you leave it planted for several years and even add pages to the journal to accomodate more entries? What would you suggest as the average number of journal pages to be filled for Twin Cities LBox (at this point in time) before retiring? Has any one retired a journal only to replant it with Volume II?

What do you consider the most enjoyable aspect of LBoxing and what has surprised you or changed your thinking about LBoxing since your first find?

Welcome to the area! Where did you move here from?

-The Red Cat

Where is the TC?

I'm guessing, Twin Cities, Minneapolis-St. Paul.

I hate to interupt the chirping of the crickets, but I just want to see if there is any interest in a very informal mini-gathering.

Gooble Gobble and I were going to get together sometime in the next few weeks to do a plb hand-off and finally meet face to face after running into each other's sig stamps for the past couple of years. Then I started thinking, what if we turned this into a mini-gathering?

It would be very informal, probably in a local coffee shop. We don't really have a date set right now. Hopefully it will be in the coming weeks. I know that there are several Minnesota letterboxers and it would be nice to put faces with stamps.

Any one up for it?

I'm in! Gooble Gobble and I had set a date to meet and then he bailed on me. ;-) Hopefully not this time....

Don't make it <too> soon, as I'd like to have something cool put together for it (i.e. after Labor Day would be wonderful).

Whoo-hoo!

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Gooble Gobble and I had set a date to meet and then he bailed on me. ;-) Hopefully not this time....

He better not this time! (I'm only half joking, Gooble Gooble if you read this) He had my Howl's Moving Castle PLB and I want it back!

I'll make a note of after Labor Day.

I found this posting - dated yesterday the 26th - on the MN Geocaching site:
http://www.mngca.org/articles.php?strArtType=12&strArtID=139

Once they post it to the MN DNR site with contact info I will inquire about letterboxing permission as well.

In the words of Yukon Cornelius, wah-HOOOOOOOOOO

(*smack*smack*smack* "Nuthin'!")

-ArtGekko

Whoo-hoo!

Although I wonder how long the permits will be for...

Despite the supposed upcoming El Niño winter, I'm issuing a challenge (or initiating a group effort, depending on how you look at it) to other Minnesota letterboxers through the dreary winter here in the land of 10,000 flakes.

Let's use the skyways here in the Twin Cities (and Duluth, too, at least at the UM-D campus). They provide a plethora of micro/indoor/urban letterboxing opportunities, so let's take advantage of them and carve, plant, seek and find throughout the year!

:)
-ArtGekko

Announcing the Minnesota Nice Mini-Meet!

Come meet other Minnesota letterboxers!

All the details are under the Minnesota Nice Mini-Meet on the events page!

The Minnesota Nice Mini-Meet is one week from today!

If you're going to be in the Twin Cities area, feel free to stop on by! It'll be a very casual, informal affair, just a chance to put faces with trail names and stamps and get to know other Minnesota letterboxers.

Place: Aster Cafe (125 Main Street, Minneapolis, MN)
Time: 1:00 pm until ??
Parking: There's a ramp a block or two away, the meters along Main Street aren't, well, metered on Sundays (that means free parking!) and there's street parking in the Marcy-Holmes neighborhood off of University Avenue.

If you would like to come, you can sign up on AQ or email me at the_red_cat529@yahoo.com. Or, of course, you could just show up.

-The Red Cat

*bounce*bounce*bounce*

Three more days! :) It's not a big gathering, but it's really the first time I get to meet and talk with real live letterboxers (as opposed to the wax ones in the LBHoF).

I expect I'll get to blame everyone there when my Christmas cards don't get done this year 'cause I'll be spending all my free time doing letterboxing projects, not cards. Least I'll have an excuse!

*bounce*bounce*

Can't wait!!!!!
-AG

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Three more days!

Yipes! I better finish carving the event stamp! But I'm getting excited too!

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I expect I'll get to blame everyone there when my Christmas cards don't get done this year 'cause I'll be spending all my free time doing letterboxing projects, not cards. Least I'll have an excuse!

You could combine the two! That would let you use Christmas cards as your excuse to do letterboxing projects. You know like letterpress cards. Or you could hide the cards and make your loved ones go find them...or...

Man...I've been at work too long...getting loopy...

Have fun and be sure to take a photo or two at what I think is the VERY FIRST Minnesoata gathering! We'll probably be up that way next July to find and place a few boxes.

Wisconsin Hiker

I'm new. Can someone give me details about the MN Mini-meet? If I can make it, I'd come.

Go to this page
http://www.atlasquest.com/events/event.html?gEventId=235

to find out more. You can even hit the "Sign me Up" link at the bottom of the attendee list tomake it offical.

Hope to see you there!!

:)
-ArtGekko

Welcome! ArtGekko already pointed you to the event page. All the information is there. It's just going to be a chance to meet other Minnesota letterboxers, get some exchanges, etc. It'll be very informal, come around 1 and stay as long as you like.

We'd love to see you there! We're a friendly bunch.

Just thought I would put out a little reminder to anyone who might happen to be in the Minneapolis area today:

Stop by the Aster Cafe around 1 pm and meet fellow Minnesota letterboxers!

If you're in the Minneapolis area, just five more days to find my temporary fall box!

It will be retired on December 20, the last day of autumn.

Anyone want to carve the state tree for one of those Index card postal rings?
You don't have to let go of your stamp, just stamp it on 50- 4 by 6 index cards along with your stamp and a state designation, and you will get a packet back of all the state trees!

Hey all,

I just got done replanting Love and Harmony from my "Peace, Love and Harmony Along the Mighty Mississippi" series. Clues have changed, so re-print them. Hopefully they'll go un-molested a bit longer this time.

-AG

Welcome to the addiction—emr— fun little hobby of letterboxing!!

It's been a while since I've been to Michaels, but I believe they carry the pink stuff, Speedy Carve by Speedball, and some of the Staedtler carving tools. Do NOT get Speedy Cut, which is tannish-grey. It crumbles and you will hate it! You can learn more about what you need at http://www.atlasquest.com/aboutlb/wiki/search.html?gSearch=pink+stuff&gAnswer=1&pSubmit=Search#q88

I order my supplies through Stampeaz (a link is under the marketplace drop-down menu at the top of this page). The prices are great, the delivery time and customer service is the best, plus the owner is a letterboxer (Webfoot), and on your order-invoice you get stamp images that she's carved. :)

Hope to see you on the trail soon!

-ArtGekko

Welcome!

Michael's is good for getting ink, but none of the Michael's that I've been to in the Twin Cities area have carried any stamp carving material, at least not lately. You might want to try a more specialized art store. I can't give you any recommendations on stores in the area since I get all of my carving material from Stampeaz.com (PZ Cut is awesome!), so I'm not up on other places to find carving material locally.

Good luck carving your first stamp! You just have to jump in and do it-once you get the hang of it, it's not that hard and is actually pretty addicting!

Your sig stamp is actually quite nice!

Here are a couple of letterbox heads up:

First off, don't include the ink pad, pencil and sharpener in the letterbox. Most letterboxers put the logbook and stamp in plastic baggies (freezer bags work best) for extra protection and pencils tend to poke holes in the baggies. If you do get a leak in your box, the ink pad will make a mess. Trust the seeker to supply their own pen and ink or markers. You can include a first finders prize (certificate or trinket) but the stamp and logbook are all you really need. You will want to put a label on the inside of the lid saying that this is NOT A GEOCACHE - please do not remove the stamp!

Second, did you get permission to plant in the state park? Minnesota DNR allows letterboxes and geocaches but leaves it up to the individual park to give permission. There is a webpage that spells out what you need to do this: http://files.dnr.state.mn.us/outdoor_activities/state_parks/geocaching_guidelines.pdf and you can even download the form. I have been working on getting permission in the state parks along the north shore and it can be a slow process.

Good luck!

MaryB (the M of RMN SD)