Back from Oregon But Not Happy About It!!!

Well, we're home as of late Saturday evening from our 10 day trip that included the Live & Breathe gathering and the ensuing 6 days on the Oregon coast! And what a 10 days it was!!!

What can we say about Live & Breathe besides a fantastic time was had by all! Excellent clues, artfully-carved stamps, terrific locations and some very unique ways of hiding boxes. Sue & I cannot thank Mitch/Der Mad Stamper and his committee enough - Raqs Enigma, Marmalade, Camp Fire Lady, the Buppsters and Rad Rhymer. Camp Adams was an ideal location with over 200 acres of old growth forests with some challenging trails as well as moderate and easy venues. Clues ranged from straightforward to those puzzles and coded devils that DMS loves! We were pleased to see that most of the clues were either challenging or required a bit of thinking to solve. Sue & I were able to participate in our first night boxing on Saturday night as well.

This committee thought of everything. There was no stone left unturned when it came to the planning aspect - great meals, coffee & trail mix/snacks in every cabin, a bottle of water to be refilled so as to avoid cumbersome water bottles, a gorgeous patch for each attendee, a commemorative booklet with very informative articles (and a clue on the cover!) and a commemorative travel coffee mug and flashlight as well.

The photo in the top left is the re-creation of the main page of the LBNA homepage - one that Mitch designed back in the day. He told me that one day he was sitting in his living room and was looking around. He spotted some of the items he had photographed for the LBNA homepage and thought it would be a great display for L & B (Live & Breathe.)

One of the highlights was the excellent event stamp carved by Raqs Enigma. It took Raqs over 80 hours to complete and was a thing of beauty. We hope it will be either planted somewhere permanently or put on display at future gatherings. It was really remarkable!

Also displayed was an array of patches from the Dartmoor 100 Club in the UK along with a very nice note and sig stamps of the membership including Godfrey Swinscow. Other patches included regional and special patches from around the US.

We will detail more about the gathering and the wonderful time Sue & I had boxing at the coast after the event as this week progresses so stay tuned. The gathering was terrific and again, we thank the committee for their 2 years worth of work in organizing and planning this event. And the boxers attending - they were also great with a nice reprresentation from the East coast, the South and West. And even Alaska (DeniseRows.) While we didn't have time to exchange and talk with everyone, those that we did proved our theory that letterboxers are the very best of folks.

On the right you will notice 2 of the crazy masquerade ball attendees dressed for Der Mad Stampers Masquerade Ball. I wonder who they might be?

More to come later along with clues to about a half a dozen new boxes that we left along the coast and one new addition to the Musicians' Series in Portland.