The Pepe's & Davidow's Letterboxing Site

Our new Poll of the Week is up for your voting pleasure. It relates to letterboxing in winter.
This will be our last post until Sunday or Monday evening. Sue & I are headed up to Vermont to ring in the New Year! We wish you all the safest, happiest, healthiest and wonderful 2004! See you all next year!

We went out and hit 3 more Rubaduc letterboxes in Newington today.
I sent out an email to anyone who expressed interest in our Dartmoor, England trip today. If you did not receive this email and have expressed interest to me, please let me know and I will send it to you. Thanks.

I updated our Dartmoor Trip page to include to very useful links. Whether you attend our trip or not, there is a wealth of knowledge amoung these links about the birthplace of letterboxing, Dartmoor National Park. This 365 square mile park is home to over 20,000 letterboxes. It's like being in letterboxing heaven! We have 10 people already signed up for this trip and hope to add up to 10 more.
If you are interested, please contact me via email.

Sue had to work unexpectedly today so our VT plans were nixed. This afternoon we headed to Unionville and Farmington and picked up 8 new finds. Check out our Finds [Page 2] for the names of the boxes. If I can't be in VT, at least we can box here!

Our Holiday Message:
This has been quite a great year for us! Last December 29th, I began a website of my own to test the waters and see if there was any interest in this pastime that had taken over every available free thought in my head!
Here we are, a year later and our website has had almost 16,000 hits, and has been visited by letterboxers from all over the US and 34 countries around the world! Never in my wildest dreams had I envisioned such a reception.
We are even getting a group of letterboxers together for a trip to Dartmoor National Park in England in late September 2004 [Email me if you are interested!]
Our heartfelt thanks go to you, our friends and readers, who have supported us and the website as it has chugged along. Never have we met a more caring, wonderful group of people.
In this most special time of year, our wish for you is the best that the holidays can offer: the warmth of a cozy fire surrounded by those you love!
May you find peace in the season and many first finds in the New Year!

We have opened a new page with info on our September 2004 Dartmoor, England trip. Check back often for details as they develop and be sure to email us if you are interested.
The more, the merrier . . . and the deeper the discounts!!!
This week's Box of the Week's honors go to the very appropriate Gifts of the Season letterbox, placed by C & H. [Yes, that is a gleam in my eye when you said "legerdemaine's Portland Lighthouse Box!!!"]

Our new Box[es] of the Week are Wanda & Pete's Tree-Joy Winter Series & Peace-Angel Winter Series, located in Exeter, Rhode Island. Both of these series were planted while on XC skis and total 8 boxes. If this snowy weather holds up, this is the place to visit with those skis or snow shoes.

It's been kind of quite here in Letterboxing Land. Not much activity as far as new posts on either talk list, new boxes or anything else of much interest. If you are interested in our proposed fall 2004 trip to Dartmoor National Park, please email me soon. I am heading over to see a travel agent in the next few days.

Had a chance Saturday morning on the way to work to squeeze in a new Rubaduc letterbox, Mr. Cool, placed in Kensington, CT this past Thursday. Thanks, duc - you are the best!! Issued a post on a Dartmoor, England trip for September of 2004 with details to come. See my post on the new Northeast talk list. Email me if you have any interest.

Spent a good part of the day today carving our Dartmoor Exchange stamp. We chose Austin Powers as the subject and will send it off to Catbead, who is coordinating this effort with Graham Howard from England, within the next few days. If you want to see the image, there is a new folder for our stamp images in our Photo Album, located under the Poll of the Week on the right column. This is only our second stamp that we have carved so go easy on me! Groovy, baby! and thanks Catbead for all of your hard work to see this project through. We will be receiving our British-born stamp sometime in February, I believe. Look for it's clues then.

Our new Box of the Week is Tom's Snobbery Letterbox Series, located in Veteran's Memorial Park in the Oakville section of Watertown, CT. This series of 4 letterboxes are located over an easy 6/10 of a mile walk. The letterboxes are item's about which Tom is a snob! How's that for a theme? Thanks to Tom & Suz for placing this series!

After a long absence, we have decided to activate our Guest Map. It is located right after the last post in this column. Click the link and please sign in by placing your virtual push pin near the location of your home town. New England residents will have to move out to sea or somewhere nearby due to the large amount of people signed in there! Thanks!

Our new Poll of the Week is ready for your vote! It relates to the formation of the new Letterboxing Northeast talk group that was started by Ryan and is now being run by our friends, TeamGreenDragon. Place your vote now!

Don't forget about the F-500 stamp "parking lot gathering" at Kathy John's Restaurant in Storrs, CT this Saturday, December 13 between 10am and noon. Look for Teach & Preach, who are transporting this ScoutDog's stamp for all to use. Even if you have not reached the F-500 mark, ScoutDog's encourages you to stamp it and count as an exchange! Also, per Preach's most recent post to the new Northeast talk list, Lenny of NeeDeeps and Preach are carving a special letterbox. I also just learned that Leader of the Pack will carve an event stamp! Two letterboxes, an event stamp and exchanges - it all seems worth the drive! See you all there on Saturday!

Today I added a new link to Phyto's & Isoceles' new website and to the new Letterboxing NE Talk List. Check them both out - and we wish both Phyto & Isoceles the best with their new site and it looks like the new talk list is off and running with 34 members and plans for a possible winter gathering!
And it hasn't even been publicly announced yet . . . the power of boxing!

Catbead posted on the national talk list the idea called the Dartmoor Exchange. This project would have a US letterboxer carving a stamp and exchanging it with a British counterpart who in turn had "carved" their own stamp. She states that in England, they hand draw a stamp image, then have them produced professionally by a stamp manufacturer. There is no need to enclose a box for planting as they are readily available in England also! Further info will be forthcoming on her webpage. As of December 2, there were 9 US letterboxers [Sue & I included] signed up for the project. We, in turn, will plant our British-born stamp and logbook somewhere in the northeast. Stay tuned for more. Sue & I are still thinking about that trip to Dartmoor in the fall of 2004 - anyone interested? I plan to look into airfare, accommodations and the like early next year - wait - that's only a month from now!!!
While at Catbead's website, check out her "Goodies" section. This page has a variety of very classy-looking labels or letterbox enclosures for your letterboxes that enable you to handwrite your box name. Great job!

Some exciting news . . . Brian of TeamGreenDragon, who along with his wife Lori are our infamous boxing buddies, has started a new, regional talk list, Letterboxing Northeast, along with Ryan. This list in no way is meant to replace or take letterboxers from the existing national talk list, but will act in concert with it to give a more regional feel to letterboxer's stories, places, boxes, etc. We wish Brian and Ryan the best in their new endeavor and encourage our readers to experience both talk lists and their individual benefits.

Placed our order for the letterboxing hiking stick medallions that James Dillon from Louisiana is ordering. He must receive your check by December 15th. Check the talk list history for additional info. One medallion is only $3.75 including shipping. Quantity discounts are available.
With the coming snow storm, Sue and I are anxiously awaiting the opportunity to try out our new snowshoes - how about boxing in snowshoes? Cool!
I will work on polishing the questions for Wanda & Pete's interview over the weekend and hopefully will email it to them by Monday. Look for their interview sometime during the week of December 15.

Very pleased with Randy's post to the talk list about the new moderation policy regarding flames and trolls - sounds like a fairy tale but it's been nothing like that. Because of our post to the talk list yesterday and our post here expressing our dissatisfaction with the tone of the talk list, we have received over 25 emails from individuals in the letterboxing community who like us, are very unhappy with the talk list of late. Today's post by Randy detailing the new policy should bring the list back to it's original purposes. Thanks to all who have supported us and care enough to hang in there and rebuild the list!

The Yahoo Groups Talk List has gotten out of control. Since the spring, I have stood by and watched it self destruct! It's time to take action. I urge both Randy Hall and Jay Drew to somehow censor [I never thought I would suggest this!] these flame wars and personal attacks that have been a daily occurance on this talk list. More and more members are leaving - but the wrong ones!! We need to take back this list and if censorship is the answer - so be it! More and more members have been leaving and keeping in the background because of the general bad vibes found on the talk list.
Let's rebuild and get back to the way it used to be - a caring community of like minded people who showed respect for one another.

Back from a restful weekend in Vermont. Except for losing our power on Saturday for 8 hours due to the high winds and blizzard-like conditions, we had a great weekend. Didn't get to Keene to work on some of those boxes due to the weather but it all worked out for the best as Dan & Melissa have just put out a new one this past weekend celebrating the annual Pumpkin Festival that's held in Keene, NH.
We did manage to pick up 2 well-known hitchhikers this weekend who shared their hitchhikers with us!! I won't mention any names but Sue and I enjoyed the conversation and exchanging!! Wish you could have stayed for dinner.
Posted our new Box of the Week and Poll of the Week question. We have chosen Leader of the Pack's new HH Hostel - The Inn of Winter as our Box of the Week. Seems like a great idea - hmmm - maybe we need one here in central CT!