Santa Fe Spooktacular Letterboxing Gathering

Last Saturday, John took the kids to baseball and then lacrosse, while I drove up to Santa Fe for the day, to attend my first letterboxing gathering.
The drive up to Santa Fe, via the beautiful Turquoise Trail was spectacular and surprisingly quick from our new East Mountain home.
The gathering was called the Santa Fe Letterboxing Spooktacular, with a creative Halloween theme. It was planned and organized by the Santa Fe letterboxers, including 'LionsMane', 'Astro-D', 'Rubber Peace', "The Great Wuga Wuga, and "RbrHorno", and 'Highwayman', and no detail was left ignored.

For more on the event and lots more photos, click LionsMane Blog link here:
Lions Game

Since it was my first event, and I had not met any of my fellow letterboxers, except through logbooks on the trail or online, I was a little nervous, but my fears were unfounded because I was made to feel welcome as soon as I arrived.

Immediately there were Trail and Personal stamp exchanges to participate in, which kept everyone busy stamping and socializing for an hour or more. There was also Event Stamps (Wow!) to stamp in our logbooks, and fun Goodie bags to look through, too.
Then there were lots of hot yummy soups and other snacks and food to warm up and energize everyone for our next letterboxing activity.....the Haunted Letterboxing Trail, where clues would provide the discovery of about 10 beautifully themed letterboxes and stamps!!

For the first 4-5 letterboxes, I hiked on my own, even though I was invited to join others. I think I just felt odd letterboxing with 'strangers' when I normally enjoyed the hobby with my family.
But after a while a small group of letterboxing friends and I just kind of merged together and it was such a great time, I don't know why I didn't do it sooner!
Letterboxing with other die-hard 'boxers is so much fun!

We had some good spooks and laughs from some of the cleverly hidden boxes, too. The Santa Fe Crew really outdid themselves!

The Spooktacular was held in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains above Santa Fe. Another letterboxer, AZ Jokester (from Tucson) and I took a drive up Hyde Park Rd. after the event to hunt for a couple more letterboxes. Along the way, we enjoyed the spectacular views and the beautiful contrasts between the pine trees and fall colered aspens.




The Great Wuga Wuga, a super Santa Fe 'boxer, and AZ Roadie (from AZ and been letterboxing since 2003. We've found many of his boxes while visiting AZ this past summer. He's also a Geologist and hid an interesting Geology Letterboxing series around the Tucson area)
Some Santa Fe Letterboxers, 'Highwayman' and 'RbHorno'.
A Santa Fe'r, "Rubber Peace" and a Tuscon-ite, 'AZ-Jokester'
In the background, near the cozy fire sits Astro-D and to the right, Lionsmane, both two of the event planners from Santa Fe. Lionsmane has placed a number of boxes in the ABQ area and has helped spiked our great interest in letterboxing with his masterfully crafted stamps and designed boxes, along with his interesting Letterboxing blog, too. Astro-D is another one of those letterboxers whose hand-carved stamps and unique boxes inspire me to create more of my own. Our family has greatly enjoyed discovering those boxes placed by both of them.
The other two letterboxers in the front are "Y-Nought" on left and "Las Palomas" on the right, both from Durango, CO. We had a blast hiking and boxing with them and their 14 yr old 'Elron'.
Yep, that's a bloody hand protecting that letterbox! Many of the boxes had clever surprises waiting for us. Very fun!
'Elron' discovering one of our 'batty' letterboxes....tucked INSIDE' the bat!
Our little group logging into the letterbox we just found on the 'Haunted Trail'.

And another group shot, taken by Lionsmane, in the Haunted Wood. I'm on the left.

Another small 'gathering' of letterboxers. The two on the outside AzoBox and Artistamp' are both from MA (I think),and the two in the center, 'Pre-boxed' and 'Front Range Hiker' are both from the Denver area.
And me added into the bunch, too.
Oh my gosh!! What a crazy photo of AZ-Jokester and I hamming it up for the camera. She is nutty like me, so we really hit it off.
For some silly reason this sign just cracked us up. Notice that the rocks aren't really falling off of anything....they are just falling down from the sky, like dino poop! Bwahahaahaa!