Equipment

Since committing to this trip months ago, it has been the one constant thing I have thought about. Each and every day without fail I think of some aspect of this trip that I need to plan, buy for, research, and yes now I have given myself the ultimate excuse, Blog about. But I find myself disappointed at times. I am running out of things to research and there is still so much time before the day actually arrives. The snow is not helping in any way possible. If there was no snow then I could at least busy myself with local letterboxing while biding my time for the western tour extravaganza.
 I have already printed out all, and I mean ALL the letterboxes in the cities and towns Jay and I will be visiting. (I do a daily search to make sure there are any new ones). OK the are countless towns we will drive through, but I mean the places we will stop and visit or camp. It would take the rest of my life to print out each and ever box along the way, let alone find them all. Though it is a interesting goal. I digress. I took the double sided clues and placed them into a "trip" binder so they can be readily accessible at any time. Unfortunately, since this trip is covering so much mileage, I had to a little box triage. I can only concentrate on drive-bys and under 1 miles. I pains me to even consider it. I'm sure there are some lovely hikes along the way, especially in Colorado and Wyoming, but there just isn't enough time in the day to do them all and I'm going for maximum boxes. There maybe some longer ones thrown in at special places.
 The next thing I needed was hiking boots.........
    Now I don't know much about boots. What to get, where to go....I have no knowledge base at all. My mom bought me a gift card to Dick's Sporting goods for Christmas, thinking it would be a good place to buy the hiking boots I so desperatly deserved. Jay and I went there with our hopes running high. The first problem was, and this type of sentence can never end well when started like this one has, there was sales associate in sight. We looked around at all the boots and had the deer in head lights look plastered on both our faces. Where do we begin, was there a woman's section? Finally we spotted something in the corner that slightly resembled a woman's size boot and wandered over into that area.
    I had borrowed my friends hiknig boots for the day a week before and felt they were comfy enough to hike in. When I saw them on the shelf I went for them. After what seemed like HOURS I finally found someone coming off break to help me. I asked her for a 7.5 and after a look of "I can't believe you are making me do actual work" she trodded off. When she came back with a triumphant look on her face she informed me that they only had my boots in the tan suede not the dark brown I wanted. So I figured I'd use my mom's generous gift card another day and went to EMS.

Thank God I did because there I found bookt that were much much much more comfortable. They were... 
VASQUE Women's Breeze Hiking Boots

  My husband ............to be cont.

Maps

There are a few items a good letterboxer needs. I have a back back that holds all the "important" necessities including my signature stamp, logbook, ink pads and pen. I also have extra freezer ziplocks, extra logbooks, an extra lock and lock container, bug spray, a shovel, and any hitchhiker or cootie I can offload while on the trail. I also have a VERY important item that I believe I would be lost without. I have a map for the area in which I am going to do the day's letterboxing. Some letterboxers believe they can do without this tool, using instead a GPS or even just the yahoo/google directions printed offline.  This is a grave mistake in my book( though I do have and use a GPS for directions occasionally). I have planted many boxes with the use of my maps in areas that do not show up on a GPS. I also feel GPS devices only work well if you have an address to input. They do not give you an overview and it makes it harder to change your mind about where you would like to go next.
  With all that said, I knew we needed a set of maps that would help us find our way on our western letterboxing and brewery tour. We immediatly knew we should look at the company that made the maps I use for letterboxing. Unfortunetly we found out that Arrow Maps no longer made any maps. So instead we looked at American Maps and Randall. We found some, but the same idea that the GPS will save us all has apperently affected the map makers. We were looking for spiral bound street maps that would aid us in areas like Denver, Boulder, Rapid City, and others that would be confusing to navigate. We found none. The maps we did find were not ad detailed as the Arrow maps we were acustomed to and almost none were made sooner then 2003. I'm not sure what we are going to do about this map problem. Though I'd rather not, we may have to pin the locations we would like to visit on Google Maps and then, heaven forbid, print them all out.

If you know where I can get good street maps of Colorado, Wyoming, Nevada, South Dakota, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico. Please let me know!

Laura (EverAfter83)