Letterboxing and Geocaching
Treasure hunting out on the trails
by Trailhead Tessie

There are dozens of letterboxes and caches hidden in Shelton's open spaces, just waiting for you to find them.  The clues are listed online.  They are not always easy to find!  Your ability to navigate your way along the trails and decipher clues will be tested!  Are you tenacious? Like to solve problems on your own? Enjoy the outdoors?  If yes, then give it a try.

Letterboxing started in 1854 when an English tour guide hid a bottle on a difficult moor and challenged people to find it.  These days, letterboxes contain a rubber stamp, preferably hand-carved. You stamp your personal logbook to prove you found the box.   This is called "stamping in."  Stamp carving has become a Big Thing in the letterboxing community, and there are some amazingly creative and detailed stamps out there. Locally, check out some of the stamps by Alan, Sojourner, or Sadie and Russ. All letterboxes MUST have a stamp.

What you need:  A compass, logbook, personal rubber stamp and a trail name.
Skills Needed: Comfort following trail blazes, reading trail maps, and using a compass. It's helpful to learn some basic letterboxing lingo (eg a "three sister tree" has 3 trunks). Serious letterboxers learn to carve rubber stamps.
Clues and information: Just about ALL clues are listed at www.letterboxing.org.  Another website, www.atlasquest.com, also has many listings with more detailed information, a message board, and excellent "how-to" guides.
Tip: Register for a free account at letterboxing.org and click the green flag to the right of the listing you are interested in.  A new screen will show you whether or not the last several letterboxers were able to find the box. 
More information on getting started
Here's a video showing a letterbox in the woods.

 

Geocaching began in 2000 when an amateur GPS user decided to test the new accuracy of satellite signals, which had previously been intentionally degraded due to national security concerns.  Someone hid a cache (pronounced "cash") out in the forest containing several items to trade, and challenged others to find it using their GPS receivers.  A traditional geocache has items to trade, but there are many other styles of caches, including microcaches (just big enough to hold a tiny rolled up logsheet) and earthcaches (virtual caches, often pointing to an interesting geological feature).  There are even letterbox hybrids (a letterbox listed as a geocache). All caches MUST have clues written for a GPS receiver (although some can actually be found without a receiver if you are determined).

What you need: A GPS receiver, optional compass, and a trail name.
Skills Needed: Technical ability to use the GPS receiver and compass; comfort in the woods. You might need to bushwack to find a cache.
Clues and information: www.geocaching.com is the main website. 
Tip: The GPS receiver signal may be off 50 feet or more, so if you don't find the cache right away, start circling farther and farther away.

 

Comparisons: I have oscillated between letterboxing and geocaching and offer up some comparisons.

Geocachers have a more sophisticated website than letterboxers, because it's an active commercial site rather than a grass-roots non-profit website. Geocaching.com provides excellent feedback and searching abilities that help to make geocaching addictive.  Hover over an online map and see the little geocache icons pop up where-ever a cache is hidden. Click on one to find the clues.  When you log your find, you leave comments for everyone else to see.  This makes the endeavor more satisfying. 

On the other hand, if you want to "plant" your own box or cache, it's much harder to list a cache than a letterbox. Geocaching.com has a very rigid, bureacratic system, and even if your cache is listed it may take weeks. Good luck.  Letterboxes have almost no listing rules and you are on your honor, with the box being listed instantaneously.   Interestingly, I have not noted any quality differences between the two systems.

The more advanced outdoor enthusiasts often seem to be geocachers, maybe because they purchased a GPS receiver for their kayaking or deep-woods hiking.  It took me about a dozen letterboxes before I realized that letterboxers use magnetic north instead of true north - and often don't know the difference. Since I had a high-quality compass with the declination set for true north, all my early searches were off about 13 degrees.

Geocaching is more popular than letterboxing, at least here in Connecticut.  There is a video-game factor to it that can be really fun.  You effectively become an icon on a screen, and your goal is to move your icon towards the treasure chest icon. You do this by walking towards the cache.  On the downside, you may have to deal with technical difficulties, low batteries, weak signals, and a factor called "bounce", which often happens near hills.  Heavy leaf canopy also weakens the signal.  But when it's working well, it's fun.

The geocache "trinkets" were never an attraction to me, although small children really enjoy them (which makes life easier for parents).  The stamps, on the other hand, are one-of-a-kind souvenirs that look great in my logbook. I realized this fully one day as I flipped through my logbook of letterboxes and caches.  The letterbox entries were fun to look at and really stood out. The stamps instantly brought back memories of my hike and the park where I found them. The cache entries were boring in comparison.  That did it: I wanted more stamps.  After that, when it was time to go find a letterbox or a geocache, the letterbox held a  distinct attraction to me.  

Letterboxing has an artistic/craftsmen aspect to it that appeals to me.  I am still learning the ins and outs of carving stamps and am not in the same league as the better carvers, but it has been fun carving scenes of Shelton, like the Derby/Shelton Dam, or Peaches the library snake, for people to stamp in their logbooks.  Carving a basic stamp is much easier than it looks, and there are how-to guides on the internet.

I am often frustrated by geocaches because of the "needle in the haystack" factor that is often used -- on purpose.  That is, the GPS receiver gets you to the general location, and after that you're just supposed to search every possible nook and cranny over a fairly wide area.  It's a lot like looking for your car keys. To be fair, there are quite a few geocachers who provide extra hints that actually do help to pinpoint the cache, but others do not, and many geocachers consider it cheating to look at the hints, which is why the hints are encrypted. 

This practice causes unnecessary environmental damage, and the National Park Service has banned geocaches for that reason, along with letterboxes, which it mistakenly classifies as a 'variation of geocaching'. I'd like to see this 'tradition' (I use the word loosely because geocaching is only a few years old) changed to be more environmentally and geocacher friendly.

With letterboxing, if you can crack the clues, you should know precisely where the box is.  No stumbling around in circles looking at every possible hiding place. It doesn't always work out that way, but at least that's the goal.   The clues may be very easy or very difficult (see XY Twister), and you might not even be able to figure out what town the box is hidden in, but once you figure it out, you should find the box quickly. (It took me a week to figure out the XY Twister clues and all of two minutes to find the box once I parked). 

On the other hand, the GPS receiver will at least get you close to the geocache.  Some poorly written letterboxing clues are too vague and can result in letterboxers wandering up and down the trails trying to figure out precisely WHICH tree with a blaze on it next to a rock is the one they are looking for.   Once you do figure out the right tree (or whatever), however, the box is generally easy to find.

Social Aspects:

Local geocachers have a monthly get-together right here in Shelton for beer and wings at Porky's.  The event is announced in the form of a cache listing.

Connecticut letterboxers have events, too, where they  exchange "signatures stamps", seek "personal traveler" stamps that some letterboxers carry (you usually have to do something to earn this stamp), search for letterboxes, carve, and so forth.  I attended a winter "Solve and Carve" event in Berlin where I was warmly welcomed by about 60 boxers, many of whom went out for pizza and beer afterwards.  These events are announced on the atlasquest website.

Both cachers and boxers have a tendency to befriend each other and start searching for hidden tupperwares together with their new friends.