The Way Letterboxing Should Be

Last weekend, I had the priviledge of meeting up with Questar and hunting some letterboxes with her. It was the perfect day filled with beautiful weather, great company and wonderful boxes. While stamping in a train themed box, a freight train went rumbling by less than 30 feet away, shaking the ground as it went. During our search for a box that mentions fire trucks in the clue, we saw and heard the engines come roaring out of the station. And a box dedicated to the victory of the soldiers and sailors during the war found us winning our own minor victory in sneaking past the construction workers and men painting doors to retrieve and replace the letterbox.
While the planters of those letterboxes could not guarantee that those additional elements would be in place every time someone came hunting, they did do a bang up job of placing them in way that could only add to the experience for their finders.
That is the inspiration that I hope is behind how and where I plant my boxes. I'm pretty sure that someone hunting for "The Tyger" isn't going to want to come across a real tiger in the woods. But hunting a tiger in reality would be a bit of a challenge, so did I create that with my clues and hiding spot? Am I taking them places that they would willingly go if there wasn't a letterbox involved? Am I helping them to see things that are interesting or beautiful or have some redeeming value outside of adding to their "F count"?
I'm sure I have not succeeded in this with every letterbox planted. But with every box found, fantastic or otherwise, I am adding to a mental list of "best practices" for planting. And that is the way it should be.


On a different note, the kittens and I decided to create our own "Fall Fesitval" yesterday to celebrate the beginning of harvest. (As I type, our combine is undergoing it's last tweaking before heading into the field. That means I am officially a farming widow once again. More on that topic later.) We took Little Bunny Foo Foo and PiWi Reese to the pumpkin patch for some gourds and other fun stuff. The girls picked out white pumpkins and drank fresh apple cider. I, on the other hand, swallowed a bug of unknown species and spent most of the time coughing.
We also made pumpkin stew for supper, baked apple, pumpkin and bat shaped sugar cookies, painted dried gourds, and made caramel dip for whatever we decided needed dipping. The chocolate frosted sugar cookies were especially yummy dipped in the caramel and more than made up for the accidental protein earlier.
What is your favorite benchmark, activity or otherwise Fall related, um, stuff?