I have been letterboxing for years. And finally decided to jump on the geocaching train. I never expected to enjoy it as much as letterboxing.

Welcome to geocaching! I found letterboxing because of geocaching. It is nice to find that sometimes it works the other way.

You'll find that there are a lot of microcaches hidden. Those aren't as much fun, but I still go and find them because I like the hunt. There are more fun hides in geocaching, simply because there are more geocachers. And then there are gadget caches, a cache where you can easily find the cache but getting it open is somewhat of a challenge. (Search for "gadget cache" on TouTube.)

At least in my area, all but one geocacher (beside me) places store-bought stamps in their letterbox hybrids. I'm sharing hand-carved stamps in all of my letterbox hybrids, hoping to recruit some to letterboxing as well.

I got long, but, again, welcome to geocaching! Enjoy!

Cool. Whats a letterbox hybrid? I just got my boyfriend started on geocaching and letterboxing. Hes enjoying it.

Whats a letterbox hybrid?

That's what geocaching letterboxes are called. They are "hybrid" because they are a combination of two things, a geocache and a letterbox. It just means that it is a geocache with a stamp in it. Like I said, all of the letterbox hybrids that I've found are store-bought stamps, except for those from Railroader921 and myself. His mother is a letterboxer so she carves the stamps for his letterbox hybrids.

The letterbox hybrids that I've placed have all used hand-carved stamps. The first one that I placed uses a stamp carved on a pink eraser using an X-acto knife. I wanted to see if I was interested in carving stamps before I put much money into it. After that I bought a bunch of stuff (carving material and gouges) from stampeaz.com.

I'm trying to bring geocachers into letterboxing, so I've placed 8 (so far) letterbox hybrids. All but the very first one are cross-posted here so that letterboxers can find them too. The only reason that the first one isn't cross-posted is because it is half a mile from the nearest landmark, and I'm not going to try to give directions using sage brush.

Anyway, have fun geocaching. There are a lot more of them available, and looking for them gets me out of the house much more than I otherwise would. It also gets me on hikes that I wouldn't be doing if not for geocaching. One trip was 16 hours (from the parking lot and back) and 2200 feet of elevation gain (and the same down hill), and I went with others.

So for me at least, geocaching is good for my health. I hope that you get something out of it too.

And try to share your letterboxing skills with other geocachers. You may bring some of them into letterboxing.

The only reason that the first one isn't cross-posted is because it is half a mile from the nearest landmark, and I'm not going to try to give directions using sage brush.

There's no rule that says your letterbox clues can't consist of gps lattitude/longitude coordinates. I've found a few boxes that only had coordinates. Just be sure to give a heads up about it being far from a trail. A few boxers may grumble, but not every box is for every boxer. And more people have smartphones with gps capabiity now.

There are so many options, and just about anything goes when you are setting up your clues. In GC, the only requirement is that the GPSr must be used to at least get you part way through the search.

I discovered geocaching while looking for a good spot to hide a LetterBox over 8 years ago. Now, I like to hide GC LB Hybrids if I can, and I always list them on AQ as well. I originally thought I would attract cachers to boxing, but I think geocaching has changed over the years. There are now so many micros, and P&Gs, and with the advent of smartphone caching, it seems that most of the geocachers are becoming lazy. They seem to want easy numbers and don't want to be out for the 1/2 mile hikes anymore.

[...] it seems that most of the geocachers are becoming lazy. They seem to want easy numbers and don't want to be out for the 1/2 mile hikes anymore.

I like a balance.

For me, most of my plants are park & grabs, but about a third of them are at least 1/10th of a mile walk. The farthest for any of my plants is about two miles (each way) with at least 600 foot elevation gain. I've found ones that are much farther, but I don't want to place them too far away from parking because I'll have to go maintain them.

Some of mine even involve climbing a tree. The local letterboxers don't want me making them do that for a stamp.

I saw a geocache once waaay up in a tree. It was funny because it was a big shade tree in a clearing, there were no other trees for a ways around it. The trunk was smooth with no hiding spots, so when the coords bring you here you think something's wrong. Then you stare up into the tree, and sure enough there it is in plain sight about 30 feet up. Never gonna happen, of course; these old bones barely made it here from the parking area, sure ain't goin' up that tree!

That reminds me of one that has since been archived. I get to this clearing, and there is no place on the ground to hide an ammo can. I looked up and there it was, hanging from a rope. It was just a matter of following the rope to where it was tied off so that I could lower it to the ground.

I've also found some where I go up in trees. The highest was "An Oberon Challenge". It was placed specifically because I've placed some up in trees, but at most 15 feet up. This one was 35 feet up!

It was placed by the cacher's son, without using a ladder. It took me three tries just to spot it. I'd come prepared, with a 20 foot ladder and a 10 foot pole, making up the difference with my height. I was still just second to find, which I didn't mind because of the difficulty.

I had planned on staying up on the ladder, but I dropped the cache. I signed it on the ground then went back up and put it back. I later used that same ladder to find another of his caches in that same park, but this time there were three of us looking.

Since then, I've used my ladder to place two washers on a cliff face, one north and one west coordinate. There are few finders for that multi-cache.

Since there are few boxers in this area I haven't put any boxes up in trees.

I looked up and there it was, hanging from a rope. It was just a matter of following the rope to where it was tied off so that I could lower it to the ground.

Oh, I've found a bunch like that! It's actually a fairly common hiding technique. And it's amazing how difficult they can be to find, even if you have an idea what you're looking for. I hunted one that was a mile from the car and in the midst of some really open woods, like none of the trees had any leaves on them, it was all open and grey. Pretty sure we were dealing with a hanging hide, and sure enough we were, but it still took a half hour to find it. And when we did find it, we'd look at it and ask ourselves "Why did it take so long to find that? It's right THERE!" Long, long skinny cord you're more likely to hang yourself on than see.