Letterboxing

Since we were going on vacation in Montana for a week, I wanted to come up with some different things to do with the kids. My dad lives south of Missoula, about 5 hours from Glacier NP and 5 hours from Yellowstone. It is a very pretty area called the Bitterroot Valley but unless you love to fish, it isn't obvious where to take kids for fun. Several friends have tried letterboxing where you get clues to track down a box containing a stamp that is used to record that you found the box. I got directions for two letterboxes before we left.

The first letterbox was in River Park in Hamilton, about 20 miles north of Darby where we were staying. It looked like a nice park on the outskirts of town. The park is also a moose habitat so there were also signs with information about the local moose and warnings about what to do if you encounter one. The directions took us along the river with a lot of "walk 120 paces toward the river". It worked most of the way but at the end we couldn't find the willow tree in the clues. It was a very pretty area to explore though and the kids had fun throwing rocks into the river. I'm sure they were making enough noise to keep any moose from coming in our direction.


The part the kids loved best though was playing on the swings after the long walk.

The second letterbox was along Lake Como, closer to Darby. We had already walked along the trail on a hike several nights before so we just followed the same path. Dylan was fascinated by all the motorboats on the water. We found the rock slide area, and then the tree with four trunks, 9 paces to a broken rock, a short climb up the rocks and voila, there was the box. However, I had managed to forget to bring a stamp pad or any kind of writing instrument to record our visit. So we settled for a picture of Gina holding the "Gone Canoeing" stamp that was in the box.