It started out innocently enough.  Earlier in the month, SpringChick had posted that there were reports that her Marblehead Light Letterbox was missing, but she lived too far away to personally check on it.  We sent her an email offering to check on it for her, since we were only about an hour and a half away.  Looking at the calendar, Doodle realized that if we didn't go today we wouldn't have a chance until mid-August.  So, despite the dreary day, we packed our picnic lunch, hopped into Doodle's Jeep "Liberty Belle" and set off. 

It was raining the majority of our drive out there, from varying degrees of drizzle to downpour.  You would think that the threatening weather would keep the masses away, making our job easier, but not in Marblehead!  When we arrived, there wasn't really rain, just a very fierce wind, and a surprising number of people wandering around the lighthouse and on the rocks despite that wind whipping everyone's hair.  

As we tried to figure the clues out, the drizzle turned to torrential downpour and everyone took shelter in their cars.  Everyone, that is, except for us, because Doodle was convinced that the rain would quickly pass, as it had on the drive out there.  We found shelter in an informational booth area, which wasn't great shelter but Doodle was fine in her little corner, despite Deedle's complaining.  Then the tree fell.

There was a gravel parking lot where we had parked Liberty Belle.  One of the upper branches of a tree, rather heavy and large and full of leaves, cracked and fell down, on the opposite side from where we had parked.  From our viewing point, we thought the tree branch fell in front of the minivan parked there, no harm really done.  Doodle decided that, however, if trees were falling and her Jeep had a soft top, maybe she better move it away from there.  As she ran towards the Jeep (still in the pouring rain), she realized that the tree actually fell on the hood of the minivan, and there were people inside.  A few others were already there making sure the folks were okay, and they were able to back the minivan out from under the branch.  All good on that end in the end, just people a little shaken.

So Doodle finally got a chance to move her Jeep, she rescued Deedle from the informational booth, and then we sat in the Jeep eating our picnic lunch, because the rain had not let up yet but Doodle was determined to wait it out.  Now, we understand why we were there, because we're letterboxers so we're just inherently crazy.  What we didn't understand was all the other vehicles that kept showing up while this downpour was going on!  As a side note, the lighthouse wasn't even open that day, so we got a big kick out of the cars that would pull up, have three or four people without rain jackets, umbrellas, or ponchos run to the lighthouse in this rain, and then run back to their car to report that the lighthouse was locked and they couldn't get in.

Somewhere in the range of 45 minutes to an hour later, the rain finally went back to a drizzle and we were able to proceed with the hunt.  We didn't find the box, as we suspected we might not be able to per SpringChick's previous post, but we took photos to send her so she could determine if we were even on the right track.  (She did respond saying it looked like we had the right area, and the box is now officially listed as Retired on her website.)

Our next stop, since the rain had let up and we were in the area, was the East Harbor Box, all safe and sound.  We want to know where the blackberries on Blackberry Trail were, though….

Heading home, we decided to do one last hunt.  We went in search of the One Hundred Acre Woods boxes.  As we pulled into the parking lot, the rain started up again, but we'd been through this before, so we grabbed our backpack, tightly pulled on the hoods on our jackets (which we later learned were not very waterproof), and set off with an umbrella to shield the clues and the boxes we'd find. 

Well, we only found one.  But we confirmed that we are, indeed, crazy for letterboxing in the rain.  We found Piglet without too much trouble.  It took us a bit to determine just how big the paces the clues were talking about were, but we still found him.  We thought we found where Pooh should have been, but there was too much foliage and rain for us to walk off the trail to search him out, so we decided to come back in the fall when there wasn't so much green stuff all over.  We found the Y the clues talked about, but no bench, so didn't even try to find Eeyore.  We saw something that looked like it could maybe very well possibly be the Tigger box, but it was too muddy to investigate further, and the rain, instead of letting up, was getting worse.  We continued down the path, took a turn somewhere, and passed a bench.  Doodle came to a realization then, concerning their inability to find the rest of these boxes.  "We turned too soon!" she cried, but by then the rain was becoming unbearable.  The umbrella was also not in the greatest of shape, having been blown inside out by the wind at Marblehead.  We decided to head over to the Main Street Diner in Vermilion for phosphates and food and we'd visit the One Hundred Acre Woods another (drier) day.

Now, we only found one letterbox on this adventure, but apparently our camera found something else.  After we took that wrong turn (that we didn't yet know was a wrong turn), we passed this really tall tree with a huge hole in the trunk, almost like a doorway.  The inside of the tree was hollowed out and a person could have fit inside there.  Doodle, thinking it was neat, told Deedle to take a picture, and she went to stand next to the hole in the tree for a to the tree for a perspective as to how big that opening was.  The rain at this point was not yet unbearable. 

After phosphates and food, back in the dryness of Deedle's house, he downloaded the photos from his camera, since he uses a digital.  He had taken two photos of Doodle by that tree.  In photo one, almost unnoticeable, there's a bit of a white blur in the lower right corner.  But in photo two, there's an unmistakable huge mist, looking almost like it's coming out of the tree, like you see in ghost hunter photos!  We didn't see any mist-like thing while in the woods, no cold air or odd sounds, but something showed up in our photo.  Click here if you'd like to see the "ghost" photos (link forthcoming).  The Letterboxing Ghost Hunters?  Maybe…but please, don't let our story keep you out of the One Hundred Acre Woods!

 

Take me back!