Friday, April 25, 2008

Richmond Déjà vu, part 1

I made a trip to Richmond, Indiana...twice...in two days. Yep, that's right, twice, in two days.

I have been finding the Box of the Month each month here in Ohio. The Box of the Month (BOM) is part of a group effort of 12 letterboxers who each prepared a letterbox and then rotate that box each month to another participant to plant. So, each month there is a new box--new stamp and logbook from a new carver--in the same planting spot in a variety of states. Ohio is lucky enough to be one of those states, thanks to M&8X.

I missed the box while it was here in Ohio in March. I was very upset about this. I had found the 5 previous boxes, and plan on finding the last 6...so to miss one of the 12 kind of was like a punch in the gut. I'd survive, but I felt it.

Then I discovered that at the end of the month, the box which M&8X had planted in Ohio is then sent to speedsquare...in Richmond, Indiana. Oh, a smile went across my face. The box I missed here in Ohio is now in Indiana. Richmond is not that far to drive...I could get the box after all.

So I made plans to go boxing in Richmond, and called my cousin, keepin' up with the Jones' to see if she wanted to go as well. We made plans to go on Monday, when her eldest was in school, and the other two would be home safe with her husband. Of course we only had so much time to letterbox, we had to be back before her husband went into work.

I looked up clues, printed them off. I printed off detailed maps. And I even wrote out the itinerary, complete with driving directions from one locale to the next and what boxes were there, so it would be easy for Jones to navigate (I was driving after all.) We were set for the trip...and excited to!

So we left Monday morning, and 1 hour, 45 minutes later we arrived in Richmond. Our first stop was the BOM. We spent an hour there looking for this allusive box. I was so frustrated...and so was Jones. We decided to move on, go find some other boxes and then come back for this one. So, on down the road we went. I had printed of clues for a mystery box and we thought we'd try for it. I hadn't figured it out, but I thought I knew about where to start. I was wrong. We drove around for a little while...and figured we better keep moving.

I wanted to plant something in Richmond, so we took some time for me to do that before going to the next location. At the next stop we finally found what we were after! Yeah! It was a series of three boxes, however the third was confirmed missing, so we just found the first two. Along that trail there is a tree with an interesting adornment.



It looks kind of like a pierced body part...perhaps an outie belly button, or something. I am always amazed when trees grow around other objects. The curiosity in me really wants to know what the story is behind this. I mean, I get that a chain was on the tree for way too long, and the tree grew around it...but who put it there? And why? And how long ago? Ugh..I'll never know.

So we left the park and drove on to the next box. The clues took us to a pretty place, a quiet wooded area on a college campus. We began to follow the clues, made it to the trail head, and then came up empty looking for the next "landmark." We walked all over the trails, searching high and low for something like what the clue said we were to find. Nothing. I rolled my eyes at this point. This trip to Richmond was turning out to be very under productive.

Time was running out for us. We hadn't even made it half way through the list of clues we brought...and we hadn't found the box of the month--the whole reason I wanted to come to Richmond that day! The BOM would be pulled to be sent to the next state tomorrow...I needed to go look one more time for it. So we headed back to the spot.

We tried. Really we did. We just could not get a grasp on where we were suppose to be according to the clues. Time was slipping away. We had to leave. Jones had to be back home to take care of her children when her husband left for work. We admitted defeat, and hopped on the freeway home. We found two boxes that day. And one of them was NOT the box I originally went there for. We felt deflated.

During the ride home, amongst our complaining, I started to think about whether or not I could come back the following day to search again. It was only an hour and 40 minute drive...and my car is good on gas...and if I got ahold of speedsquare to see where I went wrong with the clues, then maybe I could find it before she pulled it. I'm crazy, I know. But that's what I did. I got ahold of speedquare when I got home, and a trip back to Richmond was planned for the next day.

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