A letterboxing I will go. . . or not.

I had grand plans for today. My sweetie is up in Massachusetts for a job interview and I have the house back for the day. Which means I can play on the computer, watch whatever I want, and do whatever I want all day longer. Yeah, I always miss him when he's gone, but whenever I'm home lately, he's home and he loves the history channel and book TV (yes, book TV. . . SNORE). I decided with my day alone I would watch silly TV shows, maybe even a chick flick, and do some letterboxing stuff. Letterboxing is a pretty cool (if not somewhat dorky) thing that I think I will really enjoy. There are clues on a website as to where boxes are hidden. Most of them are in parks which is why I'm interested cause I think it will give me new places to walk the dogs and maybe make me walk a little longer on the trails to find a box. Anyway, you find this box and inside is a journal and a stamp. You carry with you a journal and a personal stamp. You take your stamp and stamp the box's journal then you stamp your journal with the box's stamp.

The first step was to design my own stamp and carve it and come up with a trail name. I thought about using something like a ball of yarn and needles, but it just didn't seem to go well with the whole outdooriness of letterboxing. I figured maybe I'll do something about the dogs since I'll be doing this with them. I spent the morning designing and carving my stamp:
Then I looked up a nearby clue. There was one in the park I always walk the dogs in. I decided to leave the dogs at home for this first hike since I wanted some photo documentation of this first letterboxing attempt and I didn't have a good hiking bag (I have a specific one in mind that I want) so there would have been way to much to try to shove into my pockets and juggle with the 2 dog leashes. I headed out to the park all by myself. It's one of my favorite parks in the area because there is a big pond and they have these floats just for the turtles to sunbath themselves on:
Aren't they adorable! I go on the little hike, it was only a 1 mile trail so it didn't take too long. And I found the tree the box was hidden in pretty easily. But. . .
NO BOX!!!! I was pretty upset and, needless to say, I was a little disappointed:
So then I drove around town looking for this specific bag that I wanted for when I do a REAL letterboxing trip (the other ones in the area are on 5 mile routes so I want to be able to carry water, journal, pen, stamp, ink pad, and pups!) Of course I couldn't find what I wanted. So, again rather disappointed, I head home. I get home around 330. I was chilling for a little bit, watching a little TV for about 10 minutes when I realize Coopers muzzle was swollen. I go to take a closer look and decide it's vet worthy. By the time I made it to the vet it had spread to his eye and his eye was swollen shut. He got an antihistamine and an anti inflammatory shot and then had to stay for observation for a while. He's doing much better now. Now I've got 2 and a half hours left in my sweetie-less day. I think I'm going to watch Friends and whatever other sitcoms are on that he hates and knit like crazy (I haven't knit a stitch yet today and it's 6 at night!!)