Monday, February 4, 2008

A Turtle Comes To Visit

Some of you know that we letterbox. Others may not. We've been doing it since 2002, but didn't even know there were message boards, etc. until about 2005, when we accidentally stumbled onto Atlas Quest off of someone's clues (that'd be Desi & Darren's) that linked back to Atlas Quest, or AQ.


AQ people, bear with me. I have to"ejoocate" my other friends.

AQ's the brain-child of a computer programmer/hiker/letterboxer named Ryan. He had some time of leisure and decided to flex his programming MUSKLES by working on a letterboxing website.

Years later and this is one huge community with over 16,000 member and almost 40k traditional boxes planted (love me that AQ stats page).

Ryan enjoys hiking...a lot. He already did the Appalachian Trail, all 2,173 (or 2175 according to the website) miles of it, from Georgia to Maine, by himself, in about 6-7 months in 2003.

Now in 2008, he has decided to hike the Florida Trail. What? Never heard of it? Yes, there's an actual Florida Trial. Here's the map. He actually started in the Keys and is working his way up North.

His comments are here. And also here.


A few Florida Letterboxers have been helping out along the way, giving him rides to starting spots, picking him up along the way for lunches and hot showers and comfy beds at their places.

Ryan made it up to Chuluota (Central Florida) on Saturday night and spent time with some letterboxing ladies. There are pictures...involving feet. :P They dropped him off at the same place Sunday morning, so he could do some more hiking before our planned lunch. Jake & I went while Isabel napped at home with David.

Ryan ended up on the other side of I-4 from the restaurant, so I left and picked up the crazy hobo-looking guy by the pay phones at the 7-Eleven.


Photo by ThreeHearts (Kim)



We had a fun time at lunch...



Photo by ThreeHearts (Kim)





Photo by Jacob.



Photo by Kaaren



Sits-N-Knits decides Ryan needs a shave..with a butter knife.
Photo by Kaaren


More pictures and the rest of the story when Ryan comes home with us, for another post.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Ok so now I know who dis be.
This reminds me of Peace and Love and all things Hippie. So cool that you would do that. It's great to meet people.