A mystery letterbox is a great activity that is done outside and is fun for all ages. This makes it a great family fun activity. Not only does it let you be out in the fresh air, but it also exercises your mind by trying to solve a puzzle.
If you aren't familiar with letterboxing, it's a hobby of sorts. It started on the moors of England and now has spread to the U.S. and other parts of the world.
Basically, a letterbox is a container you find outside somewhere. A common place to hide them is in parks on trails.
What's inside this mysterious container? Simply this: a log book, a rubber stamp, and usually an ink pad. Yup, that's it.
What you're really doing is collecting stamps. The stamp in the box usually represents it. So a box along the trail to Mt. Washington would probably be a picture of Mt. Washington. Most of these stamps are hand-carved by whomever hid the box, so they are pretty intricate and unusual.
When you're ready to set out to find one of these boxes, the first thing you do is lookup and print out clues that can be found on a website. Then off you go. You bring with you your own logbook and your own "signature stamp" that represents you. This stamp can also be hand-carved.
When the box is located, you take the stamp from the box and stamp it into your personal logbook. Over time you collect hundreds and even thousands of stamps. But you also stamp your personal signature stamp into the book that lives in the box. This shows that you've been there. It's lots of fun to look over the comments from all the people who have found that particular box.
So what makes a mystery letterbox different from a regular one? Well, for ordinary boxes, the "clues" are really directions. They tell you exactly where to go to find the box. For instance, the clue might say "Take the skyline trail, at the first fork go left, in 10 steps look behind the 3-trunked tree on your right."
But a mystery box requires more of you in order to find it. These boxes are little puzzles that have to be figured out. So for this reason, they are great if you want to give your kids a challenge. And there's nothing more satisfying than finding a letterbox you had to solve a clue for.
Here's an example. My husband and I are big Harry Potter fans. One letterbox on Cape Cod was hidden the day one of the Harry books came out. The clue consisted of instructions based on something from the series.
One step said to find the pond named after Colin Creevy's brother. Then count the number of words into the first book when it first mentioned where Mr. Dursley works and do certain calculations on that number, etc.
When we found the box, the stamp inside was a hand-carved image of Hagrid with Hedwig sitting on his shoulder.
So as you can see, finding a mystery letterbox can be lots of fun for the entire family. To locate mystery letterboxes, go to one of the following websites:
letterboxing.org:
- Click on Search for Boxes.
- Select your state.
- For the city, put a question mark.
- Click on Search boxes.
atlasquest.com:
- Under Letterboxes in the top menu, select Simple Search.
- In the box titled Area Search, check "Include only mysteries."
- Select your state.
- Click on Search.
If you want to have a great time, get a few friends together and crack open a game of Munchkin and watch the hilarity ensue! I love this game, it is not the most complex game ever so don't worry. You pretty much want take advantage of your friends and hold them down will you make a beeline for the goal line. 
