Letterbox: Sleeping Giant, Hamden Connecticut

 We Nowhere Nerds are super proud to announce the first fallenpeach letterbox! It's actually an old box of Matt's that we are re-purposing. We replaced the filled notebook, the dried out stamp pad, the stubby pencil and added a special surprise inside.

If you've never gone letterboxing, please check this link for more information about letterboxing. Also, check out the description on our website here. Be sure to bring a rubber stamp, a COMPASS, plenty of water, bug spray if you want and your adventurous spirit!

 LOCATION: The Tower Box is located at Sleeping Giant State Park in Hamden Connecticut. This link has a pretty good set of directions to the park.

DIRECTIONS:

From the Entrance Parking Lot, walk up a paved road past until you reach a sign that reads: Tower Trail (with arrow pointing right) / Restrooms (with arrow pointing left).

Walk along the tower trail the whole way (1.6 miles). At a steady, moderate walk this takes about 40 minutes.

When you reach the top you will see the Tower. With your back facing the tower, stand underneath the CSP and Spider Web windows in front of a false door (an arched door frame blocked by stone wall). Face North North West  and take 10 steps at 340 degrees - you should step down from a small ledge here.

Continue walking at 340 degrees another 20 steps across the grass, you should find the head of a small, unmarked trail here. In the Summer there is a lot of brush, but the path is still visible. In the Winter, you should be able to see two pine trees in the near distance at about 340-350 degrees.

Walk along the path about 12 steps and you will come to a rock. Go left around the rock patch and you will arrive at a pine tree.

Once you find this pine tree you should continue on the path 10 steps following 340 degrees until you see a rock in front of you. Behind the rock there will be a second pine tree, somewhat bigger than the first. Walk to the second pine tree behind the rock.

When you reach the second pine tree you will notice that it's the biggest pine tree in the immediate area. To see if you are at the right tree, you can test it by hugging it and seeing if your arms will wrap all the way around it. If they can't that means this is probably the correct tree.

Now, once you are done hugging the tree, turn around and from here you should be able to see the tower (in the winter at 130 degrees. Look down and see a cluster of rocks. If you peek inside these rocks you should find the TOWER LETTERBOX! Congratulations!

Before you set out, please read the waiver of responsibility and disclaimer.

Please be sure to reseal baggies and boxes carefully so that they stay dry and rehide boxes in their original location, completely hidden from view.

Yesterday: Sleeping Giant

it was a looong day

 Yesterday we hiked for three hours at Sleeping Giant. We were in search of 5 letterboxes and found 2. Three were either missing or the directions were too vague. By the end my feet were aching from the rocks we had scrambled over and I just wanted to go home. Today, I'm glad we went and glad that we were out there that long - I just wish less of it had been near vertical.

This was at the top of the first big hill we tackled, well almost the top. We took it really slow and I'm getting better at handling steepness. I still don't like heights though.

We found a beautiful, but skeeter filled swamp that neither of us had seen before. A skeeter got me in the ear and it still kinda itches. Almost immediately after this we were scrambling over rocks on the side of a bigger swamp and couldn't help but make all kinds of NeverEnding Story references...

We did make it to the tower at the top, eventually, and munched on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches while we relaxed. Then we headed back down.

It was a long day, but it was good. I'm glad we went two days in a row, but now I need a day off for my legs to sort themselves out. I think that's the second longest hike I've been on. Matt's trying to train me up for a three or four day hike in the AT sometime next month and to that I say.. well let's see. I'm still super out of shape.

Sleeping Giant part 2

We had a bit more success with our Sleeping Giant hike today. We hiked for about an hour and a half and found the letterbox that we were seeking, which was pretty exciting. It was a good hike, although I'm still really out of shape - so I was not enjoying it as much as I should have been.

We may have a longer hike tomorrow, and maybe a picnic at the top of the mountain.

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In addition to these hikes, we have a few adventures in the works - the small one is to Niagara Falls, the Canadian side, for our anniversary. We are also trying to plan a huge cross country/book writing/photography/roadside america type road trip to compete with a similar trip we took last year. More details to come as we start planning this out.

The Heat Defeated Us

Looking outside we thought - hey it looks like a beautiful day to go hiking. So we did. We checked the weather (it said 86, but since when is weather.com ever right?), put on some shorts and headin on up to Sleeping Giant.

We printed out directions for a series of letterboxes and were ready for action.

It seemed hot out, but that was okay. We hiked to the first letterbox - but couldn't find it. The directions said that some of the other ones might be missing, so we just guessed this one was missing too. Sad, but there were more to go. Unfortunately, we hadn't read the directions ahead of time - and this hike was going to take us up the Giant's Head, which is a very steep hike that I am just not up for right now. I need to be in much better shape to tackle that. It's one of the hardest hikes at Sleeping Giant.

So we headed back with the intention of meeting up with the next set of directions on the tower trail, but that was when the heat defeated us. Some reports say it hit 95 degrees today and I wouldn't doubt it. All I know is that is strangely muggy and hot for April and I don't like it much. I want Spring, not Summer. I was having trouble breathing and my allergies were acting up, which wasn't helping. Normally I'm not quite this wimpy, but it was just too hot to be out there.

We've decided to go back on a more normal Spring day, and hopefully next time our hike will last longer than 30 minutes.

Have you ever had a day when the humidity just wore you out before you got very far?