Gourd Artist Strikes Again?

OK, so I don't know if this is the mystery gourd artist at work again or not (see earlier post). But someone has been altering adopt-a-median signs around town. You know the ones - they usually look like this-


The first one I noticed was on Old Santa Fe Trail - it's made of bundles of sticks-


The next one I found pretty quickly, right down the same street, and it was made of seed pods strung together -



That was all I found for awhile. But then last week, I found another one and it was my favorite yet - on Cerrillos Rd.-


A side view reveals more-


How funny! I wonder how long it's been there and how many millions of times I've driven right past it.


Anyway, all of these are on the same streets as the gourd street signs and I'm betting there's a connection.

Happy spring! Go make some art!!

Neither rain nor snow....

It started off as a really gloomy, drizzly, cold day today. Not the kind of day you would jump up out of bed and want to go letterboxing. Except that today, I had already made plans with lionsmane and rubberpeace to go letterboxing and find what would be my 1000th find. The 3 of us have a sort of pact that we will make special boxes for each other for our 1000th finds (or at least to celebrate our 1000th finds). I know a lot of you don't like to count your finds and that's all well and good, but we Santa Feans like to count ours! It just seems to be fun and a cause for celebration. I'll never forget my 100th find - at Bridal Veil Falls, it was a letterbox by KAT. #500 was a box by allemyn at Union Station in Denver. And 1000 was to be a box by lionsmane. I had planted his 1000th box and now he was doing the same for me. He had secretly dropped off a lovely packet of clues on Sunday-







By packet of clues, I mean specifically that there were FIVE puzzles I had to solve.


Thank goodness they weren't too too hard. It would have been embarrassing to have to ask for help on my special box.... But luckily, the hardest puzzle had a hint that helped a lot. I figured out all the puzzles and was ready by Sunday evening to go look for the box. But we had to wait for a day when we could all go look for it together (lionsmane, who wanted to photograph the event, and rubberpeace, who had contributed to the box). So today was the day.

So - I bounded out of bed. I knew that the box had a mid-century modern (MCM) theme and the name of the box was "Dreams of Eames." Perfect for me (who is MCM obsessed and lives in a MCM house). I knew there were going to be stamps by a variety of letterboxers in it. I couldn't wait.

The first stop was to meet lionsmane up at St. John's College. There was a box there that I had planted / relocated recently and he hadn't gotten it yet. I went with him to find the box,


and then we went over to rubberpeace's house to pick her up. Then we all went over to the Mystery Location of "my" box. We followed the clues and had no trouble finding the box. It was threatening to rain and the ground was still wet from the rain last night, so we took the box to the place we had chosen to go to lunch nearby. There we were able to spread out and look at all the goodies. And have a really fabulous lunch. There were amazing stamps from 8 different letterboxers that I know, all with a midcentury modern theme. Wonderful! And there was a great FF certificate, a Dreams of Eames LTC, little starburst magnets and as an added bonus, lionsmane had carved a return address stamp with my address and a carving of the front of my MCM house!! Wow Wow Wow!! What a box!


While we stamped in at the restaurant, it poured outside. We were glad to have the rain, but we were also glad to be inside, out of it all. Much better to be inside, eating pie....:-)

After lunch, the rain had stopped again so lionsmane and I stopped and got another letterbox we hadn't found yet (a bonus box called Hi Desert Spring). I was on a roll and having a terrific time with all these great carvings so when lionsmane and I dropped off rubberpeace at her house, rubberpeace and I decided to continue letterboxing and go find Beatles Series #15 "Revolution" (lionsmane had already found it). The weather was holding out and even though the mountains were fogged in (or snowed in), the sun was starting to come out where we were. (There's an old saying in Santa Fe: Don't like the weather? Wait 5 minutes.) We had a great time finding our last box of the day.


Thanks to everyone who contributed to the Dreams of Eames box, and to my letterboxing pal lionsmane especially. He put in a ton of work on this box, and I hear he learned a lot about MCM design in the process! :-) I had a blast figuring out the puzzles and looking at each little stamp treasure in the box. Way too much fun. I encourage you all to do the puzzles and find this amazing box!

Rubberpeace will be at 1000 soon and lionsmane and I are already putting the finishing touches on her special box. Can't wait until she finds it. That'll be another post. But in the meantime - thanks to everyone for inspiring me creatively with your great letterboxes and for leading me on such great letterboxing adventures. I love love love this hobby and it's all because of your creativity that makes it such a grand adventure. You just never know what treasures you're going to find. Love and hugs to you all!!!

- from Astro D and her fabulous MCM cat, Eames, who now has a letterbox named after him :-)

A Swing through the Panhandle

It's Thanksgiving time again, and John and I headed out to west Texas to see my mom. We always try and take a new route out here, so this time, we decided to go explore the Panhandle of Texas a bit.

The drive out to Amarillo was easy enough - an hour's drive down to hit I-40, then it's a straight shot into Amarillo. We got into Amarillo mid-afternoon and stopped by the famed Cadillac Ranch our way into town. You can see it from the highway, but you could drive right past it and never see it (which I have done).


The 10 Cadillacs are nose down in a cow field. When this art installation was first done, the Cadillacs all had their original paint jobs. But now, people have covered them in spray paint and graffiti and actually ripped off giant chunks of the cars. You are now even encouraged to paint the cars and leave your mark. There were empty cans of spray paint all over the place and someone was spray painting when we were there. I don't have anything against spray paint or graffiti but I would have liked to have seen the cars in their original state. The cars now seemed like a monument to urban decay.


Thanks to letterboxer jbkokopelli, we took a tour of quite a few other Stanley Marsh 3 art installations. The next was "Floating Mesa," a mesa with a sky-colored fence wrapped around part of it so it looked like the top part was floating. And we also saw The Giant Pair of Legs. This is a pair of legs, also out in a cow field, that was supposed to look like the remains of some old giant statue. In fact, Stanley Marsh 3 had a fake historical marker made that talked about how the legs had been the inspiration for the poem Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley - “I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said ‘Two vast and trunkless legs of stone, stand in the desert....” Of course, this poem was written in the early 1800's, so the whole thing is a big joke. Loved it. Again, the legs have been creatively painted by sightseers.


Stanley Marsh 3's Cadillac Ranch has inspired a few copycats - there's now a Slug Bug Ranch about 20 miles east in Conway, and there's a Combine City on the southeast edge of Amarillo. We ended up skipping the slugs bugs but had to see the combines. We really enjoyed those - all 12 are in their original colors, probably because I don't think many people know about this place, it's way off the beaten path. Of course, we found out about it through letterboxing.


We also wanted to go see Palo Duro Canyon, Texas' largest canyon. It's only about a half hour out of Amarillo. So we spent one morning there letterboxing and exploring. It was a pretty spot, with lots of red rock.


When we left Amarillo and headed for San Angelo, we took another detour over towards Turkey, TX. Our friend wronghat had placed a box there that we wanted to find. Plus, there was a Bob Wills Museum there we were hoping to go to. Well, unfortunately, the museum was closed on Sunday. But it was a cute little town


and we found wronghat's letterbox on a lovely little trail on the edge of town.



Our letterboxing adventures that day took us to a spring, a couple of canyon overlooks, and into several interesting old towns.


We finally had to stop letterboxing and get on with our drive to Abilene that night. The next day was a quick drive into San Angelo, with a quick stop for a Boots Tex box in a park outside Buffalo Gap. Unfortunately, the box was gone but we got in a nice little walk (the weather was in the mid 70's so it was a perfect day to be out).

Thanks to all the Texas letterboxers for leading us to such interesting places! And a happy Thanksgiving to you all!

How Can You be in Four Places At Once, When You're Not Anywhere at All?

Well, maybe by being at 4 Corners? (I dunno, ask the folks over at the Firesign Theater....)


This is the spot where New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado all meet. We headed up that way this weekend for a weekend getaway. We used Farmington as a base and made some day trips to various spots.

On the way up on Friday, we stopped off at Angel Peak Recreation Area to find a letterbox by wronghat. I'd never been to this place (actually, never even heard of it) and it turned out to be a great surprise. A few miles off the highway to Farmington were tremendous views of badlands.


A great way to start the day.


Then we headed up to the town of Aztec to go to the Aztec Ruins National Monument (and to get another letterbox). The ruins were really fun - there was a place where you got to go through a whole series of rooms that had been reconstructed and restored - it was really interesting. There was also a reconstructed Great Kiva. We were amazed at how it looked inside and how spacious it was.


The next day, we went to the actual 4 Corners site. I hadn't been there since I was about 5. It has really gotten fixed up! It wasn't at all what we had expected. We were expecting boring, flat terrain and it was nothing of the sort. After we left the actual monument, which is on Navajo tribal land, we drove to find a Kristal and Ron 4 Corners LB nearby. It had a nice view of the San Juan River so we stopped and had a picnic lunch.


The next day was our big adventure. I had read about Aspen's Crow Canyon letterbox about a year ago and had been wanting to go. It was at a petroglyph site about 20 miles down a sketchy dirt road and I had been nervous about going out there with my friends Peggy and Lynda when we all went to Farmington this spring. So this trip was mainly about coming back here to check out the petroglyphs (I'm a big petroglyph fan). Well, it was well worth the trip back. The road wasn't bad at all (except a sandy bit at the end) - the cottonwoods were changing and the drive up along Largo Wash was lovely.


We made it to the site and had no trouble finding the letterbox. We continued on along the trail to the "Main Panel" of petroglyphs. Excellent!





That was so much fun that once we got back in the car, I wanted to go find the other places mentioned on the sign when we came in: the 44 Panel and the Warrior Panel. We drove over to the 44 Panel and hiked over to see it. You can see why they call it the 44 Panel -




Somehow we missed the sign for the Warrior Panel so didn't see that one. We were excited about our day so far - it was a beautiful day and we had had Crow Canyon all to ourselves - so we decided to go on to D-Girl's Turtle of the Lake letterbox. It was at a remote Navajo ruin with the remains of a triangular tower. I really wanted to go. We had to go back the 20 miles on the dirt road, drive another 40 miles or so, then back to another dirt road. By the time we got to the trailhead, I was pretty tired of being in the car. It was only 0.1 miles to walk to the ruins and there was the triangular tower, perched on the edge of the canyon. Beautiful! And again, not a soul in sight. It was definitely worth the drive out to this remote spot, I think it was my favorite place of the whole trip.


We hung out here for awhile and had our picnic lunch of the day. Many many thanks to Aspen and D-Girl for bringing us to these 2 very special places.

We were tired, and we decided to skip another possible box at Navajo Dam and head back the way we came along the main road, where we could stop one more time for a letterbox in Blanco. But our GPS was telling us that the shortest way back to Blanco was not the way we had come, along the main road, but it was along a series of (more!!) dirt roads which led us through Navajo Dam! So we followed the advice of the GPS. It was a beautiful drive, we got to see more new scenery, and we got to drive across the dam!


We found the letterbox there and then headed to Blanco. Never found the box there but we didn't care, we were tired and had had a wonderful day of adventuring and letterboxing. Thanks again to everyone for taking us to such wonderful places on this trip!

Up the California Coast

We took a vacation in California last week. We'd had several friends go there recently and it made me long for a trip to the coast. We'd never been up the coast very far from San Francisco, so we decided that's what we'd do. We'd go to San Francisco for a few days, then head up Highway 1 to Eureka - see the coast and then see the redwoods. Well, the trip had to be changed at the last minute and the few days in San Francisco got cancelled because our cat Edie got an eye scratch and an eye infection and we needed to deal with that. But the rest of our trip remained unchanged.

I love to research trips and this one seemed overwhelming at first. I'd gotten a book called "Experience the California Coast" and it gave a little blurb on each park and beach the whole way up the coast. I was at a loss at where to go (there were just way too many choices) and what to do until I read the clues for Doublesaj and Old Blue's St. Patrick's letterbox series. They had placed 5 boxes at their 5 favorite places on the northern coast and that was certainly a start! So our trip revolved around places with letterboxes. There was one here at this lovely spot -


and another near here in Ft. Bragg-


There was one here at a state park which was sort of dilapidated and had a stretch of coastal highway?/ now walking path that was falling into the sea-


Once we left the coast, we headed on to the redwoods. I had read that Humboldt State Park was every bit as good as the Redwood National Park but I was not convinced until we went there. Again, we were mostly guided by letterboxes and most of them were by The Olde Oak. Hunting for these boxes took us to many different redwood groves, each having their own personality. I was amazed how quiet they were, there were really not many tourists there at all (were they all in the national park?!). Anyway, I highly recommend a letterboxing tour through the redwoods at Humboldt State Park!

We started our tour at The Drive Thru Tree. I've always wanted to go to one of these - it seems like such old fashioned fun. Unfortunately, I could find no listing for any letterboxes at any drive thru trees. Well, that little issue has now been resolved.



Here's me standing by a fallen redwood-



And here's John sitting on a redwood bench, where there is a letterbox hidden conveniently nearby. VERY nearby. In the bench, actually!


And here's the only wildlife pic I got, John and the Banana Slug. And no, neither of us was even remotely tempted to lick it. (I know there is a contingent of letterboxers out there who do such a crazy thing. You know who you are!!)



And we got little chuckles out of some letterbox journal entries such as -


We made it all the way up to Eureka, where we stayed put for a couple of days. Saw this fun mural-


and these folk art wooden figures-



Then we made our way back to the Bay Area via the 101 and stayed there for a day and visited with our friend Wiley. Wish we'd had more time there, there was a lot more I had planned to do there in the days of the trip that had to be cancelled, but that will have to wait for a future trip!

Camping at Canyon de Chelly

We headed out on a camping trip this past weekend to Canyon de Chelly, in eastern Arizona, with our friends Mike and Dimid. We hadn't been camping in probably 3 years, which was way too long. Canyon de Chelly is about a 5 hour drive from Santa Fe so we drove out there after work on Thursday. Mike and Dimid were already in our reserved campsite so all we had to do was unload some stuff from our car and then we crashed in the back (a 1990 Toyota Land Cruiser).

The next morning we headed out to some overlooks of the canyon from the drives on the rim-


and then we went and found a letterbox in a nearby town. We headed back to the South Rim of the Canyon and John and Dimid hiked down the only public trail down into the canyon, which goes to White House Ruin. Here's a view from the trail, of a Navajo hogan-


and here's the famous White House Ruin-


And here's Dimid with their new pup Gigi, who we all fell in love with-


That evening, at sunset, we all piled into the car and drove over to the Spider Rock overlook. It was great to be there at sunset.


The next day, we had scheduled a private guided tour into the canyon with a Navajo guide. (The only ways into the canyon are via the one public trail or with a guide.) His name was Leander, and his dad had started the first Navajo owned and operated tour company in the canyon. We went to see several ruins in Canyon de Chelly and in the adjoining Canyon del Muerte.

Most tours last 3 hours but we had hired Leander for longer, so we got to go farther up into the canyon and see things that most people don't see on tours. Our last stop was at a cave with incredible pictographs (paintings) depicting a battle. It was a little ways from the car - and the walk to get there was through fields of wild sunflowers that are at their peak in the southwest right now.


There was a dirt track that we followed, but we still had to brush the sunflowers aside to get through (they were about 6 feet tall). It was a lovely spot.


And here are some paintings in the cave-



That was the end of our day with Leander. It was so interesting to hear him talk, as a young Navajo, about how their traditions are impacted by modern life. For example, he talked about how everyone had 4 clan affiliations - one from your mother's mother's side of the family, one from your mother's father's side of the family, etc. In the past, you would ask someone who you were interested in dating what their clan affiliations were. You were not supposed to marry anyone who had any of your 4 clan affiliations because that would be intermarrying. Nowadays, he says that asking that kind of information is awkward. So, many young people now post it on their facebook profile. It saves others from having to ask about it.

One of the interesting things about Canyon de Chelly is that, although it is a national monument, the US government does not own the land. Leander said they maintain and stabilize the ruins and the access roads, and provide some basic tourist facilities, but the Navajo reservation owns the land. So, you still find people living in the canyon who farm or herd sheep. It is all very quaint and culturally a world away.

It was a great get-away. A few days without cell service and internet access. Ahhhhhh.....