With the goal of building up better strength and flexibility for health and for riding my beautiful painted horse, I've started walking and hiking again. And I'm very pleased that this journey can include the adventures of letterboxing, too.
My favorite letterboxing partner is my one twin son, Jackson. Our family has found over 100 boxes and many of them could not have been found without Jackson's brilliant sleuthing and curiosity. He also likes to hang out with me (and I, him), so it's really great to have a buddy to exercise with and letterbox, too.
We started out Sunday, first placing a letterbox, for a friend of ours.
Lions Mane is a fellow letterboxer who lives in Santa Fe, NM. He's been a letterboxing inspiration to our family. When we first started out, many of the boxes we found were either placed by him (with his amazing hand-carved stamps and beautiful logbooks), or had been found by him and one of his trademark lion-themed stamp impressions inside the logbook left behind. In fact he's on the cusp of finding his 1000'th letterbox right now!
Recently he's been going through a terrible ordeal involving a detached retina which required multiple surgeries and very uncomfortable, face-down, bed rest. You can read more about it
here. Not until last week has he even been able to venture out.
So, in honor of what he's been through, we decided to carve a special stamp and place it in a very unique place. Only he was given the clues to start with because of the meaning behind the letterbox. But then afterwards the clues will be placed on
Letterboxing.org and
Atlas Quest for other letterboxers to find.
The box we placed for
Lions Mane is called "The Big I". It is of course, placed at the BIG Intersection where I-25, the major highway traveling from Canada to New Mexico crosses I-40, which is the major highway that makes a bee-line from the West Coast to the East Coast.
One thing I like about New Mexico is the attention to detail the state gives to bridges, ramps and over-passes. No boring grey concrete in this state. No sir. Lots of color and quite often beautiful art adorns each structure.
After placing the Big 'I' letterbox, we drove up to the northern reaches of Albuquerque to look for
Palomas Park Box. Unfortunately, it was placed in a popular park near the playground and although we followed the clues exactly, we only found a pile of scattered rocks. No letterbox.
So, we left there to finally get our hiking legs on, and headed to the Sandia Mountain Wilderness area in Embudito Canyon. We were there to find
Embudito: Letterboxing Is For The Birds! Box placed by a Girl Scout Troupe. If you look behind Jackson, you'll see the boulders we have to climb to reach the letterbox.
We bouldered our way to the top near the "baleen whale head" as you can see in the picture to the right of Jackson. We found the box and logged in.
After finding the letterbox, we enjoyed the impressive views of Albuquerque from the top of the boulders. Then did a little more bouldering and picture taking.
Inside the first letterbox we found were special clues to locate an additional letterbox within the same canyon. So off we went in search of that box.
Jackson did a very good job as Mountain Model. The canyon in the background was where we were heading.
We did a lot more bouldering up slippery rocks and through very lush overgrowth and small ponds of water.
Can you see how green and lush it is here? We've been getting lots of rain, and the plants (including poison ivy...more on that later) were going gangbusters in this canyon.
We climbed over and under and through many boulders.
The boulders are made of a beautiful black, white and pink granite. With the green lichen covering the pink rock, you can see why Sandia Mountains were given their name (Sandia means Watermelon in Spanish). At sunset the mountains reflect a beautiful glow of red, too. And with the evergreens on every ridge, the mountains really do look like a great big watermelon.
There were many small pools of water throughout the canyon. These riparian areas are welcome respites for the wildlife here.
This is a steep section of slickrock granite that we just climbed down (after climbing up earlier).
Unfortunately we didn't find that second box. At least not on this try. We discovered later from our letterboxing friends,
Lions Mane and
Astro D that we had actually hiked too far up into the canyon and that the letterbox was placed when there was a small waterfall at the end of the canyon. Also that the tree the girl scouts said was an oak (more specifically, a pin oak, which is common in the middle and upper elevations of the Sandias.) was probably not. So, we really got thrown off track, but we'll go back in another week to find that elusive box. On the way back we hiked through a wash towards the sunset.
After we left Embudito Canyon, we drove a little farther south to Embudo Canyon to look for a fairly new letterbox placed there, called
Lost Dog-German Shorthaired Pointer. The hike was short and easy and we found the box, just a 15 minutes before the park service closed the gates to the area. We had a great day hiking and we can't wait to do it again.
Well, I mentioned earlier that prolific poison ivy was growing in Embudito Canyon. And I'm sorry to say that, after living in New Mexico for more than 14 years, and spending many years hiking over mountains, mesas and through canyons in this beautiful state, I finally had to face the fact that, yes, indeed, poison ivy does grow here in our arid state. I before we even made it back to the car that the poison ivy had touched my bare legs because it as already tingling, evne though I rubbed water on my leg hoping to wash some of the toxins away.(Ignore the hairy legs. I'm too afraid to puncture one of the toxic cysts and have an oozing, spreading mess, to worry about a having a smooth pretty leg). I also got another area on the back of my knee which is covered in toxic bumps, too. gak!
It's absolutely insane! At times I think someone should just wrap me up in a backwards white suit and toss me into a padded cell! 
