The Coolest Letterbox I've Found Wasn't Even a Letterbox

 

.... Well, I guess technically it was, but let me explain.

Geocaching.com is a larger and commonly recognized community by public standards. It's platform is not intended to be secretive and if you've ever met a geocacher, you know that they live and breath their hobby. Don't get me wrong, I've yet to meet a letterboxes that was the same way, but the geocachers are their own animal. Before I even knew about letterboxing, I was geocaching with my mom and dad.

The first Geocache I found was with my dad in the mountains of Utah in 2005, I believe. My dad is a geologist and has a knack for adventure, so he when he first heard about geocaching, her was quick to find geocache and we were in the jeep driving to it. I was so young that I don't really remember that many details about the process of getting there. I do, however, remember finding the box. It was an old ammo container hiding under a log and there were trinkets in it-- not geotrash as is commonly found now. I remember taking a sewing kit out of the container in trade for a jumbo novelty penny we had purchased at the gift shop of the Kennecott Copper Mine in Salt Lake City. Dad traded something, I can't remember what, for a roll of toilet paper. I definitely thought my trade was better, but I guess you never know when you may need a roll in the woods. When the toilet paper crisis happened in April 2020, dad was quick to let me know the value of his toilet paper roll was probably greater than my sewing kit. Thanks dad...

My gap in letterboxing was smaller than my gap in geocaching, mostly because after my parents divorce, there was no one willing to take me geocaching, and we certainly didn't have a gps that could give us coordinates yet. I didn't geocache from 2005-2018, 13 years. My return to geocaching was around the same time as my return to letterboxing, but I was never able to get into it as hard as I was with letterboxing. There was only one exception, and that was my trip to see my dad in the summer of 2018.

Explaining letterboxing is very difficult to do apparently, and frankly I didn't think I could get him to go letterboxing with me, he just doesn't have that kind of personality, so I decided to sell him on going Geocaching with me. That worked! On a weekend, when he was off work, we hopped into his jeep and drove down to the Pony Express Trail. Apparently, there is a box just about every .1 miles, as is the rule for hiding geocaches on Geocahcing.com. Frankly, that is WAY too close together to stop for every one since we were driving the route and weren't going to walk that trail in the middle of July, but if you're willing to stray from the trail a little bit, you'll find a GeoTour letterbox/geocache hybrid called "We Come in Peace".

This hybrid is located in Dugway, Utah, just outside of Area 52, and it is VERY well maintained. The logbook had hundreds of entries in it, and unlike the other caches we found along the express, there was no geotrash. The box was a George Foreman grill with extra sheet metal added to appear as a space ship. The contents of the cache contained two alien masks, and logbook, and a stamp. It was SO cool. I'd love to do something similar closer to home, but there just isn't the proper environment in the DMV area, and I don't have the proper equipment or knowledge required to weld the materials together.

We stamped into the book, at the time I was still WhyNot41, and I stamped the letterbox into my logbook, which was a tiny 3x4 lined notebook from a CVS Pharmacy. This letterbox has sense been moved into my "first" logbook and if you don't mind the spoilers, you can view it below.

I wouldn't say the stamp was what made the box impressive, but the amount of creativity that went into it. The location, box design, contents, and care is what made this the coolest letterbox I've ever found.